Tower on the Coast of Leith near Edinburgh

The port of Leith near Edinburgh comes alive at low tide in this warm-toned coastal scene from 1870. Hermann Eschke sets the sun low on the horizon, spilling gold across wet sand and the shallow pools left behind by the retreating water. A fishing boat lies beached in the foreground, its mast tilted against the hazy sky, while a horse-drawn cart splashes across the flats carrying workers home. The stout round tower on the right is a Martello tower, one of the small stone forts built along Britain's coast in the early 1800s to guard against an invasion by Napoleon that never came.

Eschke was a German painter with a taste for the sea, and he traveled up and down the coasts of Europe, from Scotland to France to Scandinavia, collecting views like this one. His work belongs to the nineteenth century Romantic tradition, where the feeling of a place mattered more than getting every detail exact. Mood is what he was after here, and it shows in the soft glow of sunset, the misty air, and the unhurried pace of people finishing their daily tasks by the water.