A framed painting by William Trost Richards entitled "An Essay at Twilight".

William Trost Richards (June 3, 1833 to April 17, 1905) was an American landscape artist associated with both the Hudson River School and the American Pre Raphaelite movement. Richards rejected the romanticized and stylized approach of other Hudson River painters and instead insisted on meticulous factual renderings. His views of the White Mountains are almost photographic in their realism. In later years, Richards painted almost exclusively marine watercolors. His works are featured today in many important American museums, including the National Gallery, the Saint Louis Art Museum, the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Wadsworth Atheneum, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Yale University Art Gallery, the High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Fogg Art Museum, the Brooklyn Museum of Art the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum and Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art.