William Leighton Leitch, 1804-1883. Watercolour painter
About this artwork
This calotype is an example of a composition that is inspired by tableaux vivant. Designed to illustrate a narrative either from fiction or from artworks, they were a popular entertainment in the nineteenth century. Adamson and Hill created a series of images depicting the monks of Kennaquhair from the Walter Scott novel ‘The Abbot’, which are among the first photographs to utilise such staging. The model in this image is the landscape painter William Leighton Leitch, Queen Victoria’s drawing master and a teacher of landscape painting. The use of photography to recreate a historic scene or create an entirely fictional one remains an influence on contemporary photography of performance.
Updated before 2020
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artists:
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title:William Leighton Leitch, 1804-1883. Watercolour painter
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date created:1843 - 1847
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materials:Salted paper print
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measurements:Arched top: 19.50 x 14.30 cm
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object type:
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credit line:Gift of Mrs. Riddell in memory of Peter Fletcher Riddell, 1985
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accession number:PGP R 169.34
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David Octavius Hill
David Octavius Hill
A painter and a lithographer by training, David Octavius Hill is best remembered for the beauty of the calotypes he and Robert Adamson produced together. Hill was a sociable and kind-hearted man who did much to support the arts in Scotland and between 1830 and 1836 he was the unpaid Secretary of...