A Parkland View at Dusk
William Leighton Leitch British, Scottish
Former Attribution Peter De Wint British
Not on view
Bold shadows from the late-day sun stretch across the landscape. Deft touches of green, brown, blue, and ochre watercolor create a parkland lined with ancient trees, and fluid washes in similar tones suggest the rolling earth and crepuscular sky. The slightly rough texture of the woven paper heightens the sense of atmosphere, seeming to give presence to the air. Although this drawing was once attributed to Peter de Wint, it bears at the lower right the studio stamp of William Leighton Leitch, who signed and dated a second version of this composition in 1879. A generation younger than De Wint and David Cox, Leitch carried the tradition of naturalistic landscape watercolor painting into the second half of the nineteenth century; he served both as drawing master to Queen Victoria and as vice-president of London's New Society of Painters in Water-Colours.
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