Henry David Thoreau

July 12, 1817May 6, 1862

Henry David Thoreau

12 x 16 inches • oil on wood panel • artist Steve Simon

Emerson and Thoreau at Walden Pond

18 x 24 inches • oil on wood panel • artist Steve Simon

Biography

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About the Painting

Selected Quote

Overview

Henry David Thoreau was born July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He built a cabin on land at Walden Pond granted to him by Ralph Waldo Emerson. There, Thoreau embarked on his famous experiment in simple living and connection with nature. From this experience, Thoreau wrote Walden—a classic of American literature and rallying prose for the future American environmental movement. While at Walden, Thoreau refused to pay overdue poll taxes in protest against the Mexican-American War. He spent one night in jail which inspired him to write his essay Resistance to Civil Government. It is cited by many agents of social change including Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rachel Carson to name a few.

Ripples Across a Pond

Henry David Thoreau Biography

Ralph Waldo Emerson had a particularly strong influence on a fellow Harvard alumnus fourteen years his junior. Like Emerson, this young man was a natural critical thinker. 

Henry David Thoreau was born on July 12, 1817, in Concord, Massachusetts. He graduated from Harvard College in 1837. Over the next eight years, he worked alternately as a teacher and at his father’s pencil factory. During this period, his friendship with Emerson began and evolved into Emerson’s mentoring of Thoreau’s literary interests. 

Emerson introduced Thoreau to transcendentalism and many of the movement’s key intellectuals. It was Emerson who granted Thoreau access to land at Walden Pond where Thoreau built a cabin and embarked on his famous experiment recommended to him by his transcendentalist friend and poet Ellery Channing. On July 4, 1845, Thoreau began the two-year, two-month, and two-week venture that would prove historic.

On July 4, 1845, Thoreau began the two-year, two-month, and two-week venture that would prove historic. 

Thoreau used the time at Walden Pond to write his first book, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers, but that was not the focus of his stay. In Thoreau’s own words:

I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.

Thoreau’s experiment in solitude and simplicity, his extraordinary powers to observe and flow with nature, and his meditative capacity to lend intense meaning to it all provided substantial material for him. Nevertheless, he struggled to write about it.

While Thoreau was at Walden, Alexander von Humboldt’s first volume of Cosmos was published. It was an international best seller and Thoreau read and studied it sometime after leaving Walden Pond. Humboldt’s profoundly scientific yet penetratingly poetic view of nature flinted a spark in Thoreau and perhaps even lent him license to likewise weave science and poetic prose together.

Walden was published seven years after Thoreau left Walden Pond. Initially, it received only modest success. Over time, however, it would become revered as one of the classics of American literature, prove to be foundational to the American environmental movement, and influence scores of authors, artists, scientists, and politicians.

Thoreau bust
Bust of Henry David Thoreau by Walton Ricketson

Thoreau was also an ardent abolitionist. While at Walden he refused to pay overdue poll taxes, believing the Mexican-American War would result in the expansion of slavery. He spent one night in jail before an anonymous person paid Thoreau’s debt. Although his intended defiance was, therefore, cut short, the experience left a strong impact on him. It provided inspiration for a lecture Thoreau first delivered in January 1848 entitled “The Rights and Duties of the Individual in relation to Government.” The lecture was amended and published as “Resistance to Civil Government” or, as it has since been more commonly known, “Civil Disobedience.”

The essay would have a profound influence on actors of social change the world over. Many of the great peacemakers presented in this collection including, Leo Tolstoy, Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Rachel Carson were inspired and influenced by this powerful work. Like ripples on a pond, their examples have influenced countless others.

Thoreau contracted tuberculosis as a teenager. The condition sporadically nagged him his whole life. In 1860, he developed bronchitis, precipitating a decline in health. He died on May 6, 1862. His last words were “Now comes good sailing.” He was buried in his family plot and later moved to Author’s Ridge in Sleepy Hollow Cemetery in Concord, Massachusetts where he rests near the graves of Nathaniel Hawthorne, Louisa May Alcott, and Ralph Waldo Emerson.

About the Paintings

Henry David Thoreau

12 x 16 inches • oil on wood panel • artist Steve Simon

Emerson and Thoreau at Walden Pond

18 x 24 inches • oil on wood panel • artist Steve Simon

The first of the pair of paintings features Henry David Thoreau standing before his beloved Walden Pond. The second painting is also set at Walden and is painted with reverence to a particular group of artists and the impact they had.

The transcendentalist musings of Emerson and Thoreau had a strong influence on what became known as the Hudson River School painters. These landscape artists celebrated the discovery of the American frontier with profound reverence for the natural world. 

This painting presents Emerson and Thoreau on the banks of the famous pond and is a celebration of a painting called Kindred Spirits (below) by Hudson River School painter Asher Brown Durand. Durand’s painting features a romanticized vision of the Catskill Mountains as the backdrop to two figures, Thomas Cole and William Cullen Bryant. Cole, also a painter of the Hudson River School, and Bryant, the famous poet, journalist, and editor, were close friends. Durand was commissioned to create the painting as a gift to Bryant after Cole’s death. The image is a true touchstone of the connection between nature and the arts. 

Kindred Spirits by Asher Brown Durand

Interestingly, it was another Hudson River School painter who would help prompt the U.S. Congress to act as stewards of man’s fragile balance with nature. After an expedition to the then-unknown region of Yellowstone, Thomas Moran painted his masterpiece The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone (below). This painting helped encourage Congress to establish Yellowstone as the first national park in America and indeed the world. The National Park Service has been dubbed “America’s Best Idea.” It is an idea that has caught on the world over. It is an idea rooted in the kindred spirits of nature and the arts, exemplified by the passions of Emerson and Thoreau.

Thomas_Moran_Grand_Canyon_of_the_Yellowstone_

The Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone by Thomas Moran

Selected Henry David Thoreau Quote

Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?”

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