Leutze

And they certainly recall “heroic narratives found in American and European history paintings,” she added, such as Emanuel Leutze’s “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which hangs at the Met, and Théodore Géricault’s stunning “The Raft of the Medusa,” which is in the collection of the Louvre.

He stands in front of a bust of George Washington and a rendering of the painting “Washington Crossing the Delaware” by Emanuel Leutze, one of the most famous images in the world in the mid-1800s.

Perhaps Colescott’s most famous painting is the 1975 “George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware,” which riffs on the classic 1851 history painting by Emanuel Leutze, “Washington Crossing the Delaware.”

His two most famous paintings, both from 1975, are his simplest appropriations: “Eat Dem Taters,” a blackface sendup of van Gogh’s “The Potato Eaters,” and “George Washington Carver Crossing the Delaware: Page From an American History Textbook,” which transforms Emanuel Leutze’s depiction of George Washington, heading for victory, into a Black achievement, paying homage to one of America’s great educators.

But there were a few surprises, namely Emanuel Leutze’s grand “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” which sold for $45 million, more than twice its high estimate of $20 million.