Leonard Robert Brightwell, a fine British etcher and illustrator of animal subjects, studied at the Lambeth School of Art, London and was to become a Fellow of the Zoological Society of London in 1906, and a member of the Marine Biological Association in 1922. During the First World War he served in the British Army after which he established himself as a major illustrator and an author.

From approximately 1920 to 1932 Brightwell created a number of finely rendered etchings and engravings of animal life. All were published in London by James Connell & Sons in signed editions ranging from fifty to one hundred and fifty impressions. He exhibited 20 works at the Connell and Sons Gallery and 3 at the Abbey Gallery as well as at other important galleries and institutions up and down the country.