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I'm afraid Mikeoz is your best bet for a reference guide to reading seals that we have. He is also an excellent calligrapher. The challenge with seals is that, like understanding many other aspects of Chinese art well, you need to pick up several different skills, not just one. As you may know, there are a number of different script types, and the same characters can look sometimes radically different depending on which script type they appear in. Complicating matters further is the fact that sealcarvers revel in unusual and obscure character forms and variants, so one needs either to learn what some of these variants are or simply learn how to make use of the numerous dictionaries of various scripts and compendia of early character forms (eg Xu Shen's Shuowen Jiezi dictionary). All of which is rather a pain if you have no particular interest in the language itself...
the characters on your seal are not particularly difficult to read actually, it's just that I'm not entirely familiar with how characters that I recognize in "standard" script look in some older script types and styles, so when I am just looking at unfamiliar forms, it can be far from obvious what the current standard form equivalent is. It's easy to guess at, but not easy to guess right.
In any case, thanks so much for sharing a fine early 19th century painting, particularly since it's by someone I've never heard of before. Do try to locate other works by this guy for comparison; I rather doubt there are more than a handful out there. It's a real pleasure to see something otherwise unknown of good quality. Certainly that is the reason I keep showing up here every day.
Actually I think that it is a lot easier than people think to develop an eye for good quality paintings. The trick seems to be finding them and having the money to buy them! So congrats on a lovely find. If you ever get sick of it, do pop it in the mail to me!
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