In a letter of March 25, 1851 to Miss Charlotte Child of Augusta, Maine, Eastman Johnson wrote of his experiences studying in Düsseldorf and working in the studio of history painter Emanuel Leutze. Leutze was, at the time, carrying out his most important work, Washington Crossing the Delaware, of which Johnson was making a smaller scale replica from which an engraving was to be made. Though German born, Leutze was raised in the United States, and only returned to Germany 1841 to study at the Düsseldorf Royal Academy. So it comes as no surprise Leutze, who espoused the aesthetic principles of German academic painting, and Johnson, who arrived as a student in Düsseldorf in 1849, would quickly find common ground. “Leutze is an energetic and talkative fellow, generous and full of spirits,” Johnson wrote. By 1859, both artists had returned permanently to the U.S., where they met with a great deal of success; in 1860, Leutze was commissioned by the U.S. Congress to decorate the stairway of the Capitol, while Johnson painted throughout his career portraits of the most prominent public figures of his time, including industrialists William H. Vanderbilt and John D. Rockefeller and Presidents Grover Cleveland and Benjamin Harrison.