combination of medicine and surgery. Read was in personal relations with the surgical reformers. He dedicated his book to Banester, Clowes, and Pickering, and married, on 24 June 1588, Banester's daughter Cicily. In the same year he published ‘A most Excellent and Compendious Method of curing Woundes in the Head and in other Partes of the Body with other Precepts of the same Arte, practised and written by that famous man Franciscus Arceus … whereunto is added the exact Cure of the Caruncle … with a Treatise of the Fistulæ in the Fundament and other places of the Body; translated out of Johannes Ardern; and also the Description of the Emplaister called Dia Chalciteos, with his Use and Vertues. … Lond., by Th. East,’ 4to (Hazlitt, Collections, 3rd ser. Suppl. p. 4). Prefixed to the translation is ‘A Complaint of the Abuses of the Noble Art of Chirurgerie,’ written in metre by Read (Ritson, Bibliogr. Poet. p. 310).
[Read's Method of Curing; Marriage Licences of the Bishop of London, Harleian Soc. Publications.]
READ, NICHOLAS (d. 1787), sculptor, was a pupil of Louis François Roubiliac [q. v.], whose extravagant style he imitated. He is said to have cut the skeleton figure of Death on the Nightingale monument in Westminster Abbey. On his master's death in 1762, Read succeeded to his studio at 65 St. Martin's Lane. In 1762 he gained a premium of a hundred guineas from the Society of Arts for a statue of Actæon with a hound; in 1763 he exhibited a medallion of Sir Isaac Newton. In 1764 he gained the society's first premium of 140 guineas for a marble statue of Diana. His monument to Rear-admiral Tyrrell (1766) in the south aisle of Westminster Abbey is one of the most tasteless groups of sculpture in the building (cf. Gent. Mag. 1818, i. 597 n.) In 1779 he sent to the exhibition of the Free Society of Artists a pretentious allegorical design for a monument to Chatham, whom he represented standing between Learning and Eloquence on a sarcophagus supported by History. He exhibited again in 1780, but towards the end of his life he lost his reason, which had been impaired for some years. He died at his house in St. Martin's Lane on 11 July 1787.
[Redgrave's Dict. of Artists; Exhibition Catalogues (Soc. of Arts and Free Soc. of Artists); Gent. Mag. 1787 pt. ii. p. 644; Dossie's Memoirs, 1782, iii. 440.]
READ, RICHARD (1745?–1790?), engraver, was a pupil of James Caldwall [q. v.] in 1771, when he gained a premium of the Society of Arts for drawing. He was also taught by Bartolozzi, but produced rather slovenly work both in stipple and mezzotint. He worked as an engraver till about 1790, when he abandoned his practice to become a dealer, and printed many of Bartolozzi's worn-out plates. He died towards the end of the century.
He engraved in mezzotint a portrait of John Herries, after Martin; ‘A Dutch Lady,’ after Rembrandt; ‘The Sisters,’ after James Nixon; ‘Scene from Winter's Tale,’ after Paul Sandby (all in 1776). Among his principal stipple engravings are: ‘A Country Girl,’ after J. Boydell, 1778; ‘The Finding of Moses,’ after E. Le Sueur, 1779; ‘Beauty and Hymen,’ after Cipriani, 1783; and ‘Love Disappointed,’ after Sir William Beechey, 1784.
[Dodd's manuscript memoir of Engl. Engr. (Brit. Mus. Addit. MS. 33404, vol. xi.); Dossie's Memoirs, 1782, iii. 404; Redgrave's Dict. of Artists.]
READ, SAMUEL (1815?–1883), water-colour painter, was born at Needham Market, Suffolk, about 1815. Being intended for the legal profession, he was placed in the office of the town clerk of Ipswich; but he developed so strong an inclination for art that he was transferred to that of an architect in the same town. In 1841 he went to London, and began to draw on wood under the guidance of Josiah W. Whymper. This led in 1844 to a connection with the ‘Illustrated London News’ which lasted for the rest of his life. In 1843 he sent to the exhibition of the Royal Academy a drawing of the ‘Vestibule of the Painted Hall, Greenwich,’ and continued to exhibit annually until 1857, when he was elected an associate of the Society of Painters in Water-Colours; he did not become a full member until 1880. His first contributions to its exhibitions were drawings of Milan Cathedral and of Rosslyn Chapel, and the total number of pictures exhibited by him amounted to 212. In 1853, just before the outbreak of the Crimean war, he went to Constantinople and the Black Sea to furnish sketches of the country for the ‘Illustrated London News,’ and was the first special artist ever sent abroad by an illustrated newspaper.
The subjects of the drawings which Read exhibited during the earlier years of his associateship were derived chiefly from Belgium, and especially from the churches of Antwerp. Others were the outcome of visits to France, Germany, and North Italy, as well as to places of historic interest in England and Scotland. In 1862 he visited Spain and
