David K. Stone (American, 1922 - 2001) "Henry David Thoreau" Signed lower right. Original Oil painting on Masonite. Provenance: Collection of James A. Helzer (1946-2008), Founder of Unicover Corporation. This painting is the original painting which was published on the Fleetwood Commemorative Cover for the Shapers of America Collection produced throughout 1986 and 1987. Although the collected writings of Henry David Thoreau fill some twenty volumes, his name -- and fame -- will forever be linked with Walden: of Life in the Woods. It is no wonder that Thoreau remains an enigma. He lived his life in the shadows. With few intimate friends, Thoreau lived always in Concord -- except when escaping to the greater peace of Walden Pond, but a mile away. And after death, his fame came to rest on the fact that he lived almost independently of familiar civilization, in a way reminiscent of an earlier and simpler time when men built their own cabins and grew their own food. At Walden, Thoreau communed with Nature and with God, testing the Emersonian gospel of self-reliance. Walden Pond was to Thoreau "the earth's eye," there he "looked deep into the secrets of Nature." Thus, the pond provided both a laboratory and a symbol. As Thoreau wrote, "I cannot come nearer to God and Heaven than to live in Walden forever." But it was for only two years (1845-47) that he resided there, studying his peaceful surroundings with the eye of a "Natural" philosopher and the mind of a "Moralist." Having thus contemplated nature and its laws -- laws higher, in Thoreau's mind, than those of society, he preached "civil disobedience." And, though others viewed him as nonconformist when he refused to pay taxes -- in protest of the United States War with Mexico (1846-48) -- Thoreau himself believed that he was merely conforming to "higher" laws than those imposed by constitution or man. Image Size: 18 x 21.75 in. Overall Size: 24 x 27 in. Unframed. (B11610)