Leith

Signorini crossed to Britain for the second time in 1881 and spent much of the trip in Scotland, working in the streets of Edinburgh, in Glasgow, at North Berwick, and here in Leith, the port below the city. He chose the Kirkgate, an ordinary working street, and painted it at close range with the shop lettering left readable. A hoarding carries the name of Rob Roy, the 18th-century Highland outlaw whom Walter Scott's novel had made famous across Europe, and two policemen stand in the foreground under it. He showed the picture in Florence the following year at the Societa d'Incoraggiamento delle Belle Arti. It is small, 45 by 41 centimetres, signed at the lower left with the two letters T and S rather than his name. The Italian literature knows it as the Kirkgate at Leith near Edinburgh. The museum's own record calls it simply Leith.