Her mother was the sister of Sir John Wedderburn, 5th Baronet of Blackness, who fought in the Jacobite rising of 1745, and whose daughters were cared for by Read after his execution.

Through their connections of the gentry, they were given sanctuary in Paris that same year and introduced to the painter Robert Strange, who is speculated to be Read’s teacher and introduction into the French artistic sphere.

There she studied other works of art and improved her skills with little hindrance or instruction; it would have been hard for her to have been accepted into an academy class as a woman, let alone a foreigner whose family had a price on their heads for aiding and supporting a cause against the King of Great Britain and Ireland, but from the late 1740s, she spent time in the studios of the pastellist Maurice Quentin de la Tour and Louis Blanchet.

While there, she became friends with members of the Roman Catholic Church, often commissioned to recreate master paintings in oil or pastel for those in high clerical positions.

One of these faithful patrons, Cardinal Albani, allowed Read to copy some of the portraits he owned by Rosalba Carriera, which ultimately led the man to sit for her himself.

Many of her portraits were well engraved by Valentine Green and James Watson, and a pair of plates, by J. Finlayson, of the celebrated Gunning sisters, the Duchess of Argyll and the Countess of Coventry, remained popular.

[2] Read's talent for portraiture was highly regarded in her day,[9] and was the subject of an epistle by Tobias Smollett: Let candid Justice our attention lead, to the soft crayon of the graceful Read.and praised by William Hayley.