The works of German Romantic painters occupy a prominent place in the long tradition of interior scenes that reaches from Vermeer to Hammershøi. The paintings of Georg Friedrich Kersting, a contemporary and close friend of Caspar David Friedrich in particular, have proved perennial objects of admiration, not only for their remarkably atmospheric use of colour but also for their meditative serenity, occasional sense of emotional turmoil, and general sense of seclusion from the outside world.

Works by Kersting only come up very rarely for sale, as the artist was not prolific. His interior scenes amount to a little over a dozen - the majority of these are in museum collections.

In the present work Kersting depicts a reader in his study at night time. The reader is shown in profile and appears intensely focused on his book. The sole light source, the three candles of the Bouilotte lamp placed at the centre of the overall composition, is casting a warm glow that progressively dims the further it spreads out in the room.

The curtain on the left serves to seal the room off from the outside world. A map stands upright and curled up to the left of the desk and also symbolises the exclusion of the outside world. The entire room appears to have been modelled by Kersting as a 'world inside a box'. All the everyday details within this self contained cosmos have been rendered in a very precise, almost geometrical fashion. It is a careful arrangement of individual objects - boxes, packets, letters, jars and pots, but also shadow casting ropes - which all seem to acquire a magical presence thanks to the shifting intensity of light that pervades this night time chamber.

Indeed, the most fascinating feature of this composition is the shadow-play visible on the pale green wall, as if Kersting wanted the light itself to be seen as the main protagonist of this nocturnal scene: emanating from the lamp shadows in sophisticated projected curves flutter along the entire wall as if animated by spectral hands. Putting on their own show within the overall image, they invite the viewer to puzzle them out. What stands out is not just Kersting's skillful rendering of these shadows, but his ability to instill them with a life of their own. Thus they seem to become manifestations of the upward rising thoughts of the engrossed reader. Nothing penetrates into this room, which, like the solitary reader himself, is completely closed in upon itself. Its air of spiritual composure melds with the quiet of the night, evidently unperturbed by any sound within the house or any noise out on the street. It is an almost palpable silence.

On completing his studies in Copenhagen, Kersting moved to Dresden in 1808, where he soon found friends in the circle of Romantic artists surrounding Caspar David Friedrich. His first independent works, the portraits of Gerhard von Kugelen and Caspar David Friedrich in their studios (in the collections of the Karlsruhe Kunsthalle and Hamburger Kunsthalle respectively) attracted much attention at the 1811 exhibition at the Kunstakademie. Friedrich had become a close friend with whom Kersting had explored the Riesengebirge mountains in 1810. Goethe admired Kersting's works and negotiated the sale of the Elegant Reader and of the Embroideress (a portrait of Goethe's friend Louise Seidler), which were acquired by the Duke Karl August of Weimar. ‘These two works together with Man Reading by Lamplight complete a quasi trilogy of Romantic erudition, representing the quintessence of Kersting's oeuvre. In these 'room portraits' the sitter and the interior space merge into one unit. The austere order and spartan simplicity of the interior preclude any distraction from the spiritual concentration. Nothing penetrates into this completely self-absorbed space, where an inner world unfolds.’ (Peter Wegmann, Caspar David Friedrich to Ferdinand Hodler: A Romantic Tradition, Nineteenth Century Paintings from the Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur, New York, 2003, p. 88).

The present work relates closely to no. A 61 in the Kersting catalogue raisonné, Leser bei Lampenlicht of 1814, with identical dimensions but oil on canvas, in the collection of the Oskar Reinhart Foundation, Winterthur.