The son of the painter and drawing-master, William Leighton Leitch (1804–1883). Richard P. Leitch was a landscape painter, an excellent water-colour painter and a good draughtsman on wood’ (MacGeorge, 112), he exhibited between 1844 and 1860 at the Royal Academy as R. Leitch Junior, at first from his father's address. His View on the River Limpopo with a Herd of Hippopotami (reproduced in the Illustrated London News of 5 January 1856) was among scenes painted for Gordon Cumming's South African Entertainment at 232 Piccadilly, London, in 1856. He also signed an engraving based on one of Charles Wirgman's watercolour sketches of China in the Illustrated London News (1857–8).
