Henry David Thoreau
Unidentified Artist
c. 1863
Medium
Classification
Department
Smithsonian Collection
Museum
Smithsonian American Art Museum
Credit
National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution
Accession Number
NPG.2020.174
Rights
Public Domain
Tags
BowtieWriterDiaristEssayistPoetHenry David Thoreau: MaleTranscendentalistNaturalistPortraitPrint
About this artwork
Henry David Thoreau’s classic book Walden; or, Life in the Woods (1854) helped establish the nature writing tradition in the United States and had a lasting impact on environmental thought. Influenced by transcendentalist ideas of self-reliance and spiritual communion with nature, Thoreau retreated to land owned by Ralph Waldo Emerson on Walden Pond from 1845 to 1847. “I went to the woods,” he wrote, “because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I ...