This work is one of four monumental landscapes of identical size representing the four times of day. Three of the four paintings are known today; one has been lost. Morning: Landscape with Fishermen is in the Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and Noon: Landscape with a Roman Tomb is in the Musée du Petit Palais, Paris. The fourth painting, Night: Seascape, has not been seen since 1949. Painted in Gericault's Paris studio during the summer and autumn of 1818, the series of landscapes was doubtless conceived as decoration in the manner of Joseph Vernet to be placed within the paneling of a specific room, but it is not known for whom or for which house the paintings were destined. These landscapes fuse souvenirs of ruins in the Italian countryside—for example, the aqueduct at Spoleto in the Metropolitan's painting—with the stormy skies and turbulent moods typical of Romantic painting and the concept of the Sublime. Gericault's great achievement was to invest David's heroic but intellectualized imagery with deep currents of emotion. Evening: Landscape with an Aqueduct thus carries some of the sentiments regarding man's relation to nature conveyed by the artist's most famous work, The Raft of the Medusa (Musée du Louvre, Paris), which he painted at the same time. Indeed, several of the Michelangelesque figures that animate the landscapes were also used in The Raft.

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