The artist Camilla Leontine von Littrow was born in Trieste in 1856 and is known as a landscape and marine painter. She came from an old Austrian noble family. Her father Heinrich von Littrow was a cartographer, writer and later head of the nautical academy in Trieste. One of her uncles was the famous astronomer, university professor and director of the Viennese observatory Carl Ludwig von Littrow, who was married to the writer and women's rights activist Auguste von Littrow. Her daughter was the painter Ella von Littrow, married Lang, whose biography is often mixed up with Leontine von Littrows .
Her father, who was culturally very committed throughout his life, was instrumental in founding the Schiller Association in Trieste, which for many years became the social centre of the city. Leontine von Littrow thus grew up in a diverse family, in an artistic and literary environment. Her father's career took her early on to the area around Trieste and Abbazia, which can later be found as a magical motif in many of her pictures. Leo von Littrow, as she was often affectionately called and also signed her paintings this way, received her education in Paris as a student of Jean d’Alheim, where she was influenced by the impressionist painting of the great French. She spent long and artistically prolific stays - often with her friend and colleague Olga Wisinger-Florian - in Istria and Dalmatia, where she captured imposing city and harbour views, picturesque bays and spontaneous surf studies in numerous paintings. It was very difficult for women to be recognized as a painter before the turn of the century - a subject dominated by men - which is why Littrow repeatedly signed her paintings with the abbreviation "Leo Littrow".
Recurring exhibitions in Vienna or Munich were a sign of her appreciation at the time. The award of an equipment order for the mezzanine rooms in the Natural History Museum from 1883-86, often cited in Littrow's oeuvre - the only order to a female artist - in which the coast of Regusa is shown, was however carried out by her cousin Ella von Lang. Leontine von Littrow died in Abbazia in 1925.
