A view of Reading from Caversham Heights
Mr Edmund Niemann begs to inform the nobility and gentry of Reading that he is engaged on a large PANORAMIC PAINTING of the Town … The nobility and gentry of Reading though, even with the town’s tradesmen buying prints priced at 6 pence or 1/- if on ‘superfine large paper’ could not keep the wolf from the door. Two years later in Reading gaol as an insolvent debtor*, Edmund perhaps will rue the day he left his safe job as a clerk at Lloyds of London to follow his heroes Constable and Turner.
But on that morning he had caught one moment when the translucent clouds flowed from rose to pearl and ochre and the sun danced in the mirrors of the wind-chased leaves.
*I have used Mike Dewey’s research for an article on Niemann in the Bucks Free Press.
Kate Pursglove
‘Many artists, writers and musicians, like Van Gogh and Rembrandt, who are now revered, were rejected or ignored in their lifetimes. The struggling Niemann would have given his eye-teeth to be in this exhibition.’
Kate Pursglove is a well-known Reading poet.
