Painter and printmaker Otto Theodore Leyde was born in Wehlau, East Prussia in 1835, son of Ernest Leyde and Emilie Sophie Pacbel. It's unknown where his formal education took place but it is presumed he studied art in his youth. In 1854 he emigrated to Edinburgh, Scotland, where he found work as a lithographer and began exhibiting his watercolors and oils at the Royal Scottish Academy. He established himself as a noted genre and landscape artist who specialized in Scottish subjects, and later in his career he was elected Librarian of the Royal Scottish Academy. He married Charlotte Elizabeth Smith, with whom he would have eight children. He became a naturalized British citizen in 1881; He died in Edinburgh on January 11, 1897.

Leyde's work is held in the collections of the National Galleries of Scotland; the National Portrait Gallery, London; Moray Council Headquarters, Elgin; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; among others.