Studio RT Ltd

Description

We are pleased to offer for sale this large, delightful watercolour by the Prussian/Scottish artist and Scottish Academician Otto Theodor Leyde, who has signed the painting in the lower right hand corner Otto Leyde RSA. The RSA dates the watercolour to after 1880 and before 1897. The watercolour depicts two young girls in colourful dresses and with bare feet, one blonde and one brunette, sitting on the side of a sand dune with its tufts of marram grass behind them. This is a charming watercolour and it is these beautifully executed and sensitive watercolours of children that are amongst the best work of this very well listed artist. He was appointed an Associate of the Royal Scottish Academy in 1870 (ARSA), an Academician in 1880 (RSA), a Member of the Royal Scottish Watercolour Society (RSW) and a |Member of the Royal Society of Painters and Etchedrs. (RE) Since 1886 he ably discharged the duties of Librarian of the Royal Scottish Academy. He died on 11th January, 1897.

Otto Theodor Leyde, R.S.A., was born at Wehlau, East Prussia, in 1835, being the son of Ernest Leyde, a Rector of a school in that town. He was educated there, and studied at the Royal Academy of the Fine Arts at Koenigsberg under Professor Rossenfelder.

At the age of nineteen he came to Edinburgh, where he finally settled, and was employed for some time as a lithographic artist. He became a naturalised subject of Her Majesty Queen Victoria, devoted himself to painting, and in 1858 exhibited for the first time in the Royal Scottish Academy. It is said that his work was never out of the Academy's catalogue until the date of his death.

He had a considerable practice as a portrait painter both in Oil and Water Colour, and painted genre-subjects chiefly derived from Scottish life and song. Etching occupied latterly a good deal of his attention.

Among his subject pictures are “The Toon’s Drummer” (1868), “The Return” (1878), “ The Auld Sang ” (1869), and his diploma picture, “ Auld Robin Gray ” (1880). His portraits include “ Sir Thomas Jamieson Boyd ” (1873), now in the Merchant Company Hall, “The Countess of Wemyss” (1877), “The Countess of Dalhousie,’ “ Major-General Annesley,’ and “The Hon. Mrs. Cheape.”

On a personal note, Otto Leyde married Charlotte Eliza Smith (1848-1938) the daughter of a Tasmanian Magistrate and had four daughters and a son, Ernest. The eldest daughter Julia died before her fifth birthday, but the second daughter Marion became an artist, as well as teaching art from the family home at 17, St. Bernard's Crescent, Edinburgh, where her father died from a short, acute attack of bronchitis with complications.

The watercolour has been newly double mounted in two-tone acid-free mountboard and is newly framed in a 1 1/8 inch bronze gilt frame to suit. It will be supplied with new brass hangers, new brass picture sire and will be ready to hang.

Image size: 19 x 14 1/2 inches - 48.25cm x 36.85cm

Frame size: 27 1/4 x 22 1/2 inches -- 69.2cm x 57.15cm

Medium: Watercolours on paper

Condition: Very good. The colours are strong and there is no foxing. The mounts and frame are new.