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Walden Pond Revisited
Walden Pond Revisited
Walden Pond Revisited
(American, 1882 - 1945)

Walden Pond Revisited

Alternate Title(s)
  • Walden Pond
Tempera, possibly mixed with other media, on hardboard (Renaissance Panel)
1942
42 × 48 in. (106.7 × 121.9 cm)
96.1.42
Bequest of Carolyn Wyeth, 1996
Not on view
N. C. Wyeth was a great admirer of philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862), and found artistic inspiration in Thoreau’s writing. The many visits Wyeth made to Walden Pond inspired him to create this fanciful view of Thoreau’s world. Its imagery is drawn from Thoreau’s books, principally Walden, or Life in the Woods (1854), in which Thoreau chronicled more than two years of his life spent living in a rustic cabin on the shores of the pond. Thoreau’s bean field, his boat, a fox, a pair of bluebirds, the nearby railroad, and the village of Concord, Massachusetts, are all referenced in Wyeth’s painting. The meticulously rendered botanical specimens in the foreground speak to Thoreau’s reputation as a naturalist.