Evening: Landscape with Figures

In contrast to watercolors that present a place, this postcard-sized work offers instead a mood or a touchstone for the recovery of memories: two figures contemplating distant hills, backlight by a setting sun. Though Read lived in Salisbury, in Southern England, this brand of Romanticism may stem from currents in Germany. Read was a friend of Wolfgang von Goethe, a highly important cultural figure who worked as a poet, novelist, scientist, critic, and more. Goethe promoted the work of Casper David Friedrich, transforming him from a little-known artist to a national hero in Germany. Friedrich’s compositions often included one or two figures facing away from the viewer towards a distant view of nature’s sublime beauty.