John Frederick Kensett embraced the aesthetic categories of the Sublime and the Beautiful shared by fellow artists and the writers Ralph Waldo Emerson and Henry David Thoreau. In A Woodland Waterfall, Kensett blended the rugged wilderness typical of Sublime landscapes with a peacefulness associated with the Beautiful. He painted the canvas with characteristic attention to detail, subtle gradations of tone and bold accents such as the orange lichen on the rocks and the red foliage to the left.
A Woodland Waterfall is loosely based on Fawn's Leap, New York, but Kensett altered its appearance for dramatic effect. One change the painter made is visible in the upper left section, where he painted over some trees on a rocky ledge to simplify the composition.
