In October 2017, we presented for the first time in the Museum of the City of Rijeka a comprehensive overview of the complete works of a forgotten “Master of Light” Leontine von Littrow. On the occasion of this exhibition a comprehensive monograph about the artist Leontine von Littrow was published, which you can order from us. In this work about her life and work, the Austrian art landscape is expanded by a highly interesting chapter. In the ranks of the numerous artists of the turn of the century who also traveled the sea and the coasts of the monarchy and documented them in important paintings, Leontine von Littrow is probably the most extraordinary painter of the Austrian Riviera.

She came from an old Austrian noble family. Her father was a cartographer and writer. He was appointed director of the local nautical academy in Trieste, where Leontine von Littrow was born as Camilla Leontine von Littrow. One of her eleven uncles was the famous astronomer, university professor, and director of the Vienna Observatory, Carl Ludwig von Littrow, who was married to the writer and women’s rights activist Auguste von Littrow; their daughter was the painter Ella von Littrow, who later married Lang; Leontine von Littrow’sbiography is sometimesconflated with hers. Leontine grew up in the home of this widely educated family, whose salon was a hub of intellectual life in Vienna. Frequent visitors there included Feuchtersleben, Dannhauser, Ebner-Eschenbach, Hebbel, Grillparzer, and Ottilie von Goethe. Leontine von Littrow received her training in Paris as a student of Jean d’Alheim, where she was influenced by the Impressionists. Leontine von Littrow became familiar with the area around Trieste and Abbazia at an early age, and she repeatedly chose it as the subject of her paintings. She captured it in numerous cityscapes and harbor views, as well as in studies of bays and the surf along the coast. Her interest in the Istrian and Dalmatian landscapes connected her to Olga Wisinger-Florian, with whom she shared both artistic interests and a personal friendship.

It was difficult for women to gain recognition as painters before the turn of the century. However, there is evidence of the esteem in which she was held at the time; not only through recurring exhibitions in Vienna, Munich, and especially London; but when commissions were awarded between 1883 and 1886 to decorate the ground-floor halls of the Natural History Museum with paintings, Leontine von Littrow was the only female painter who was not overlooked. The paintings depict the coast of Ragusa.

Leontine von Littrow was a member of the Vereinigung Bildender Künstlerinnen Österreichs.