Gold nanoparticles (GNPs) are embedded in a highly entangled solution of an ultrahigh molar mass polymer (polystyrene M-w = 16 800 kg/mol in toluene). When an isolated GNP is heated by a focused laser beam, the solvent is attracted to and the polymer is pushed away from the particle surface by thermophoretic forces, thereby elastically deforming the transient polymer network. Because of the long disentanglement time, the randomly distributed GNPs are trapped in the meshes of the transient polymer network and allow for a visual observation of the network deformation field using an optical microscope. The observed displacement field of the meshes is of long-ranged nature and only limited by the finite size of the cuvette, despite of the local heating of a single submicrometer-sized GNP.