Nathaniel Hawthorne

While growing up, Nathanial Hawthorne was steeped in the Puritan traditions of Salem, Massachusetts, which later provided many of the themes in his fiction. In celebrated works such as The Scarlet Letter (1850) and The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Hawthorne explored the moral and cultural history of seventeenth-century New England, especially the human tendencies to make mistakes, allowing even good people to stray into reprehensible behavior.

Hawthorne’s portraitist, Emanuel Leutze, is best known for his painting Washington Crossing the Delaware (1851). He painted Hawthorne in 1862 while in Washington, D.C., to complete his mural for the U.S. Capitol, Westward the Course of Empire Takes its Way. Hawthorne described his visits to Leutze’s studio during the Civil War, writing of the mural: It “was most cheering to feel its good augury at this
dismal time, when our country might seem to have arrived at such a deadly stand-still.”