Preliminary communication
https://doi.org/10.17685/Peristil.59.7
Leontine Littrow, Woman Painter of Late 19th and Early 20th Century
Ervin Dubrović
; Rijeka City Museum
Abstract
Leontine Littrow (Trieste, 1855 – Opatija, 1925) was a woman painter who signed her works exclusively as Leo Littrow or by initials L. L. She was also called Lea or Leonie. She belonged to a prominent German
family, her father was a sea captain and her grandfather and uncle were astronomers and directors of the Vienna observatory. On her mother’s side she descended from the British family Barry who moved to Trieste around 1830 and whose members served as officers in the Austrian navy, two of them as admirals. The artist
lived in Rijeka from 1867 until late 1880s, and then in Opatija. She studied painting under Jean d’Alheim, a painter from Paris who travelled to Croatia and painted views of Rijeka, Rab and Dubrovnik. Her artistic development can be traced from early 1880s until early 1920s: during the four decades of her career her work underwent different stylistic changes, from early Romanticist to plein air and Impressionist paintings, and finally expressive and pronouncedly three-dimensional renderings of cliffs and the sea. Her known oeuvre includes mostly views of Venice and its surrounding landscape, as well as sea and fishing scenes in Rijeka and Opatija such as laundresses on the shore, views, secluded places, small houses and rooftops
of Volosko, motifs and views of Ika, Lovran, Mošćenička Draga, Mošćenice and Brseč, and later of islands of the Kvarner Bay and of Dalmatia. Constant themes of her paintings were also gardens and parks in Opatija, pergolas and gazebos, as well as southern, Mediterranean landscapes with pines, cypresses, palms and agaves.
Between 1880 and 1924 Leontine Littrow participated in a series of group and several solo exhibitions, most often in annual Künstlerhaus exhibitions in Vienna from 1880 until the beginning of the 20th century. She also participated in international exhibitions in the Glaspalast in Munich (1893 and 1903) and many other exhibitions in Central Europe and Germany (Prague, Budapest, Klagenfurt, Salzburg, Wroclaw, Chernivtsi, Koper) as well as in Opatija (1893, 1900–1902, 1908 and 1912) and in Rijeka (1916, 1917, 1918 and 1924). She achieved her greatest success in London, where she exhibited in the Royal Academy as early as 1886, and between 1896 and 1899 she held several acknowledged solo exhibitions in the Continental Gallery, praised by the critics for the bright light, freshness and colourism of southern landscapes. News of her success reached Vienna, Rijeka and Opatija. She also participated in the Chicago World’s Columbian Exhibition in 1893 in the Austrian women painters’ section, as well as in the large Imperial Austrian Exhibition in London in 1906 in the Dalmatian section, alongside Bukovac, Vidović, Meštrović and others.
Keywords
Leontine Littrow; painting; plein air; Impressionism; Austria; Croatia
Hrčak ID:
178996
URI
Publication date:
1.3.2017.
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