Sketches: Cows; Two Female Portraits, One Crossed Out (from McGuire Scrapbook) 1816 - 1868

This sketch of cows and two female portraits, one crossed out, was made by Emanuel Leutze sometime before his death in 1868. Leutze was a German-American artist best known for his large-scale history paintings, often depicting scenes from the American Revolution. In this intimate work, we see Leutze exploring the everyday, mixing studies of farm animals with portraits of women. The crossed-out portrait adds a layer of intrigue and invites questions about the artist's relationship to his subjects. Were these real people, or figments of his imagination? Why was one portrait rejected while the other was not? The presence of the female portraits alongside the cows also raises questions about gender and representation in 19th-century art. Leutze, working in a time when women's roles were highly circumscribed, depicts them through a male gaze. The obscured face of one of the women suggests an ambivalence about the act of looking, even as the artist seems drawn to it. This small sketch provides a glimpse into the complex social and personal dynamics that shaped Leutze's art.