Thomas Carr Leitch was the first Town Clerk (the equivalent of a chief executive) of the borough of Tynemouth, which was incorporated in 1849. He is known to have applied to be admitted to the Queen's Bench in 1840, when he was recorded as living in Kittisford Place, Hackney, and North Shields. In 1870 he is listed as a registered owner of the Tyne barge 'Edith'. The artist is assumed to be Rudolf Lehmann, a German-English portrait painter and author. He was born in Hamburg in 1819, the son of the painter Leo Lehmann, and studied with his older brother Henri at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris. He settled in London in 1866, becoming a British citizen, and moved in the same social circles as Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Robert Browning, Lord Leighton and other prominent figures of the day.