The Villa Fountain

Medium: Oil On Canvas
Size: 85 x 125 cm (33.5 x 49.2 in)

Provenance: Purchased from the artist by the Glasgow Art Union; A 19th-century album of watercolours, one section of which devoted to the works of Leitch; Sotheby's London, April 3, 1996.

Exhibited: London, Royal Academy, 1846, no. 714

William Leighton Leitch was born in Glasgow. Sir Daniel MacNee and Horatio McCulloch impassioned the young Leitch with art through their many meetings and helped to develop his artistic talent. He quickly abandoned his law career, one chosen by his manufacturer father. In 1824, he began work at the Glasgow Royal Theatre as a scene painter and continued this in London at the Queen’s Theatre in 1830. He later travelled in Italy and Sicily and stayed for a number of years. It was during this time, in which he produced his great watercolours and oil paintings of the Alban Hills. Furthermore, he made numerous aristocratic contacts, one of which would eventually lead him to his next job as the art master to Queen Victoria and members of the Royal Family. He visited Balmoral, Osborne and Windsor, giving the British royal family lessons in watercolour and drawing. This arrangement lasted for 22 years, resulting in a Royal annuity. In 1862, he was elected to the New Society of Painters in Watercolours and was Vice-President for twenty years.

William Leighton Leitch greatly influenced Miklós Barabás, a Hungarian watercolourist, whom he met at the Palazzo Ducale in Venice. The two became close friends and their friendship resulted in the modernizing of Hungarian watercolour landscape painting in the 19th century. Barabás was inspired by Leitch’s airy, quick watercolour technique and learned the freer English method of watercolour painting using a wide brush on damp paper. The two painters toured and painted the Lago Maggiore region in 1834.

Leitch exhibited his work in the Royal Academy between 1833 to 1861. Leitch died in 1883 in London.

The artist has captured a harmonious balance of classical architecture and idyllic nature in this watercolour landscape. However upon closer observation, one sees that the impenetrable constructions found throughout the painting, are not in pristine condition. The nature has consumed the buildings leaving rubble, leafy overgrows and mossy imprints. Leitch does not highlight this architectural destruction, but rather he embraces it, creating a tranquil scene of women languorously collecting water from the villa fountain. The viewer can sense the cooling fountain water, the warming sun and the lulling villa adding to the calming effect of Leitch’s watercolour landscape.