James Arthur Benade was one of Reading's first and best known mid-19th century landscape artists after the turn of the century. Many of his pictures are famous for their skies, as seen in this example. The bright, clear shades of blue and pink shining through the clouds in the upper left are deeply contrasted to the dark, ominous clouds rolling in from the upper right while the figures in the foreground are deep in conversation, bathed in the only ray of light.
