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The Thoreau Institute
at Walden Woods Library
About Thoreau's Life and Writings
Texts and Links
including Thoreau's contemporaries, his readings, current
scholarship and
related documents
Amelia
Montague Watson (1856-1934)
A portfolio of watercolor
sketches for
Thoreau's Cape Cod (Boston: Houghton Mifflin,
1896)
from the
Paul Brooks Collection
A note on the
1896 illustrated edition of Cape Cod: “from an actual
copy of Cape Cod with marginal sketches in color made by
the artist as she read the successive chapters amid the scenes
characterized by Thoreau. Thus she saw the sand, the lighthouse,
the ocean, the sails, the fishermen, the weather-beaten houses,
and when Thoreau threw in a Floridian contrast she was able
happily to jot down a note in color from her own Florida
sketches. The original book, conceived and executed for the
artist’s friend and compagnon de voyage, is reproduced
for the pleasure of those whose own reading of Cape Cod
is illuminated by the color and form which Thoreau’s writing
suggests or their fortunate memory brings back.”
Amelia Watson’s
companion for whom she did the original volume was the
photographer, writer, biologist and educator, Margaret Warner
Morley (1858-1923).
In addition to
the sketches Amelia Watson made in her copy of Cape Cod,
― now housed in the Paul Brooks Collection ― the artist also
made supplementary sketches for inclusion in the illustrated
edition. Nineteen of those sketches have survived.
―
click on thumbnails below for larger image
―
No image
may be
reproduced without
permission
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Amelia Watson by
Henry Beetle Hough (from The Dukes County
Intelligencer, February 1968). Reprinted by permission of
the Dukes County Historical Society, Inc., Edgartown,
Massachusetts.
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