"leave to" or "leave for"

Which of the following is correct?

I am leaving for London.

I am leaving to London.

I have always thought the first one is correct till I came across the name of this painting.

Solution 1:

Both are correct, but the first is more common modern parlance. Leaving to is likely an ellipsis of leaving to go to.

Solution 2:

"Leave to" is not an American usage - as an American ESL teacher/ editor, I can guarantee that it is not in our grammar books. The accepted standard preposition that completes the infinitive in this case is "for" - in recent times, I've heard an Irish woman using "to" and did a Google search to see if it was perhaps a BE form that I wasn't familiar with.