Pique-Nique was originally a man’s name. It was coined in 1649 by an anonymous author satirizing a French soldier and his cohorts who gave up their martial duties for the pleasure of drinking and gourmandizing. Since 1694, we have supposed that piquenique is a word without a source, a mystery defined in the lexicographer, Gilles […] read more

Phoebe Quirke has asked St.John Strafford to a picnic. It’s not the best weather for a picnic. It’s October, the days are cool, and the sky is usually partly sunny. They have been awkward lovers; partly because Phobe is diffident and Strafford is taciturn. They have made love three times, and now Phoebe is pregnant, […] read more

Claude Monet The Tent, Giverny, about 1883-1886.     read more

Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is mostly a comedy comprised of mismatched episodes, the second of which concerns a search for a secret British laboratory in Scotland and an attempt by a German spy to seduce Holmes. The search leads Holmes, Watson, and Gabrielle Valldon  (the spy as yet unmasked) to Loch […] read more

Craigie W. Craigie’s “The Vocabulary of Picnic” is a collection of 19th-century compound expressions for a picnic, such as basket dinner, basket lunch, basket party, and basket picnic. There is a Croquet basket picnic, Grand basket pic-nic, social basket pic-nic, Social evening pic-nic, Grand basket picnic, Social basket picnic, social evening pic-nic, and Grand basket […] read more

Dickens vented his distaste for English travel food, especially sandwiches served in cold, comfortless train stations. The Boy at Mugby Station working in h Refreshment Room gleefully tells anyone who will listen (or not) how awful the refreshments (if they can be called refreshments are: “You don’t know what I mean? What a pity! But […] read more

Galsworthy’s is a moral tale about the “deeply buried” guilt. What is supposed to be a romantic picnic celebrating a silver anniversary turns achingly poignant. Ashurst’s past is vividly recalled when inadvertently picnicking with his wife, Stella, next to the grave of his first love, Megan David, a simple farm girl. They were to be […] read more

The second oldest African American cookbook is Fisher’s What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Etc. She does not mention picnics in her text,  but fried chicken is a picnic staple. Fried Chicken: Cut the chicken up, separating every joint, and wash it clean. Salt and pepper it, and roll into flour well. […] read more

According to Andrew Smith, editor of the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, explains that a “sugar sandwich” is a generic sandwich with sugar added, such as a banana sandwich with sugar sprinkled on the bananas, or homemade peanut butter, which is not particularly sweet, with sugar. Lucy Long, a folklorist, says that […] read more

  Lynne Taylor-Corbett’s Picnic on the Grass (2007) is a choreographic adaptation of Claude Monet’s  Luncheon on the Grass (1865). The music is from Francis Poulenc’s Sinfonietta (1947).       Featured Image: Lynne Taylor-Corbett. Picnic on the Grass (2007). Carolina Ballet, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina; read more

Wordsworth’s lines reveal the sudden beauty a picnicker might encounter, which triggers pleasure and spiritual ease at an evening picnic: Ah! That such beauty, varying in the light             Of living nature, cannot be portrayed             By words, nor by the pencil’s silent skill;             But is the property of him alone             Who […] read more

Two picnics engage viewers to admire Lindsay’s unmistakable style. The Picnic, done in 1944) is a joke that upends expectations. Half of the women picnickers are naked. The Duke’s Picnic (1945) is a typical picnic where all the guests are clothed. Viewers are discouraged from finding the picnic feast. Featured Image: The Duke’s Picnic (1945), […] read more

Tolstoy’s “The Hunt” from Childhood, Boyhood, Youth is a memoir episode of picnicking with his father during a hunt in which he remembers the sights, sounds, and smells of the forest: the chatter of the peasants, rumbling of horses, cries of quails, a hum of insects, and the smell of the soil, grain, and steam […] read more

Moffat’s picnics, all titled Picnic and all completed in 1963, are influenced by Fernand Leger’s Partie de champagne series o paintings.  Featured Image: The Picnic at the New Bridge read more

Celentano’s painting Picnic depicts working-class people happily at leisure. The picnic is simple without frills or elegance. A family picnic in the country. the picnic blanket is spread out under a tree. Seems to be several families, and they all cluster on or around the blanket: in the center, a woman, her head back and […] read more

Renoir’s painting’s Le Repos sur l’herbe aka Resting on the Grass l’herbe is a portrait of a family at play.   Renoir does not consider this a pique-nique because it is an outdoor gathering. See Pierre Auguste Renoir in Le Repos sur l’herbe and Le Déjeuner sur l’herbe (1893c.). Barnes Foundation read more

Bearden transports Omar Khayyám’s Persia to the Tropics for his take on “Quatrain XI” from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. But the man is Persian and the woman is black. Though the poem suggests sensuality, Bearden presents the poet clothed but the woman naked, except for a body sash and a head turban. It’s still […] read more

Norma Jean Darden and Carole Darden’s sisters have written a family food memoir.   Spoonbread and Strawberry Wine is a short biography of their father, Bud Darden, Walter T. Darden, MD, with a picnic menu attached. The sisters’ family picnic memories at their home in Newark, New Jersey. The Dardans include some tips for a picnic, […] read more

For all we know, Jean-Baptiste Charcot’s chef on the Pourquoi Pas! Used this recipe for Crêpes Suzette when the crew celebrated Mardi Gras in Antarctica. 2450— SUZETTE PANCAKES   Make these from preparation A, flavoured with cura9oa and  tangerine juice. Coat them, like Gil-Bias pancakes, with softened  butter, flavoured with curaçao and tangerine juice. 2403— PREPARATIONS FOR […] read more

Simkhovitch’s The Picnic is a day of leisure for a group that seems mirthless. They sit on bare earth, and each is unsmiling and subdued. There is no picnic joy as a small picnic cloth is spread around which they all gather. A man in a bathing suit reclines, his back to the viewer. Behind […] read more

Because the scene is obviously a picnic, the National Gallery of Art’s title, The Picnic after the Hunt, is apt. But Lancret would not have used pique-nique because the French denoted it as an indoor dinner. More likely, he would have titled un repas de chasse, as he did for a painting now in the Louvre titled Un […] read more

Chess pie is a custard pie peculiar to the American south made with cornmeal. Pocock adapted Edna Lewis’s recipe. See Scott Peacock. The Gift of Southern Food New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 2003 Ingredients: 1 nine-inch pie shell 4 large eggs, at room temperature 1½ cups sugar 1 tablespoon fine white cornmeal 1 tablespoon unbleached all-purpose […] read more

Birch’s View of the Delaware is a landscape embellished with a picnic party just arriving by boat to a destination on the shore near Philadelphia. See Thomas Birch. View of the Delaware near Philadelphia (1831), oil on canvas. The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C.).   read more

Williams’s Peep into Tottenham Street, or Dilettanti Performers in Training is a knockoff of Gillray’s caricature Dilettanti Theatrical;-or-a Peep at the Green Room. Vide Pic-Nic Orgies (Tottenham Street was the location of the rooms the Pic Nics rented for their theatricals, dinners, and gambling. The obese woman in yellow is Albina Hobart, Lady Buckinghamshire. She exclaims […] read more

“The Mole begged as a favour to be allowed to unpack it all by himself,” In Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1931.   read more

When Mary Phelps Jacob was nicknamed Polly, when she married her first husband, she became Mary Phelps, Jacob Peabody. Harry Crosby, her second husband, renamed her Caresse Crosby. He liked the alliteration and the pun on caress. When Harry died a suicide in 1929, Caresse carried on with the Black Sun Press and the support […] read more

“The Curate’s Friend” is one of two of Forster’s coming-out stories published in The Celestial Omnibus. In “The Story of a Panic,” Pan appears in a whirlwind and rapes a young boy. In “The Curate’s Friend,” a Faun enamors Harry the Curate and becomes a life-long friend. Telling this story long after, Harry leaves the […] read more

Fricassee is picnic food when dining indoors. It’s mentioned in Samuel Foote’s The Nabob (1772) and Mary Belson Elliott’s The Mice and Their Pic Nic (1809).  Had Elliott needed a recipe, she might have found it in Mrs. Rundell’s A New System of Domestic Cookery, Formed Upon Principles of Economy, and Adapted to the Use of Private Families (1806). Fricassee of […] read more

In “Picnics and Outdoor Meals,” Spry writes, “The nicest outdoor meals are those cooked on the spot,” and among the best are barbecues.” She does not like “grand picnics,” the kind for which everything is transported and served by staff. “This is not the best way to enjoy a picnic,” she asserts. Paradoxically the recipe […] read more

Wharton’s Summer is the story of a summer romance doomed to failure that begins with seduction at a picnic. When Charity Royall, a small-town girl of seventeen, falls for Lucius Harney, a socially upscale architect, she loses her innocence at a picnic. The outing and picnic lunch are critical moments in the narrative suggesting the […] read more

An exception to the unremitting cold in Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a summer church picnic when Ethan and Mattie Silver first feel love for one another. When Mattie is forced to leave, Frome drives her to the train station. Along the way, they stop by the frozen Shadow Pond and look out on the frozen […] read more

Bebe Meaders’ picnic favorites– Potato Salad  & Deviled Eggs (with no measured portions) in the style of Marietta GA: Potato Salad Cook and peel  3 – 4 Irish potatoes.  Chop finely about l/2 cup celery. Add l/4 (maybe l/3) cup of sweet pickles, cubed.  Chop and  add 2 – 3 hard-boiled eggs.  l/4 cup chopped […] read more

Unlike Sam Weller’s “weal pies,” Mrs. Beeton’s includes a recipe for a proper veal pie.* Veal Pie Ingredients.—2 lbs. of veal cutlets, 1 or 2 slices of lean bacon or ham, pepper and salt to taste, 2 tablespoonfuls of minced savoury herbs, 2 blades of pounded mace, crust, 1 teacupful of gravy. Mode.—Cut the cutlets […] read more

Beal was an important American artist in the first half of the 20th century. He’s now almost forgotten.  See Gifford Beal. The Garden Party (1920), oil on canvas. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. read more

Bainbridge’s idea of picnic fun is a biting satire of an English company picnic during which everything that can go awry does, including murder. Two friends, Brendass and Freda, organize a picnic for the employees at an Italian wine and spirits shop on Hope Street in London. An ulterior motive is Freda’s dreamy intention of […] read more

This recipe is Ranhoffer’s response to Dickens’s Pickwick Papers and Sam Weller’s description of “weal pies.” Dickens dined at Delmonico’s in New York City while Ranhofer was chef de cuisine, but this item was not on the menu. Veal Tart or Pie   Suppress all the fat and sinews from a kernel of veal; cut […] read more

Spitzweg’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe, Das Picknick, aka Luncheon on the Grass, is a happy middle-class person in the country. They sit, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. The central figure, a portly man, toasts a woman in white, perhaps a bride. The company rises to the occasion. Largely forgotten now, he was an important German […] read more

Contrast Rackham’s mice with Mary Belson Elliot’s The Mice and their Pic Nic and Mickey Mouse. See Arthur Rackham. “The City Mouse and the Country Mouse,” Aesop’s Fables. Translated by Vernon Jones. London: Heinemann, 1912   read more

Brassaï’s Picnic on the Edge of the Marne is a snapshot of a group at leisure. It’s a typical picnic with mounds of food and six bottles of wine for five adults. Compare Brassaï with Henri Cartier-Bresson’s Sunday on the Banks of the Marne [Dimanche sur les bords de la Marne, France] (1938). See Brassaï [Gyula […] read more

Hughes used a picnic as a theme for a family portrait of the Pattinson family. The title he gave was A Birthday Picnic – Portraits of the children of William and Anne Pattinson of Felling, near Gateshead. A red table with food in the left background, but it is unclear whose birthday is being celebrated. […] read more

Shahn’s Sunday School Picnic, Ponderosa Homesteads, North Carolina (1937); http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8a17327/ For a contrast, see The Bad Seed. read more

Gerasimov’s celebration of a very abundant harvest is propaganda. Soviet farms were not producing well, and the nation suffered chronic harvest shortages. Stalin’s propaganda program deemed otherwise, and the artists and writers were instructed to portray a land of plenty and prosperity according to the rules of Social Realism. Gerasimov’s farmers are happy and well-fed […] read more

A more placid and joyful allusion to the myth of Pan is George Warner Allen’s adaptation in painting, Picnic at Wittenham (1947-1948). It is a pastoral with an edge and suggests his homosexuality. Allen’s adaptation of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s picnicky social entertainments, Assembly in a Park (1716-1717) or The Music Party (1718-1719). Allen’s group is a picnic […] read more

Burgess’s Picnic by a River is The New Yorker’s August cover. By the side of a placid river, a mother, father, and son sit on a plate of cheese, a bowl of salad, a loaf of bread, fruits, and lemonade, Mother has a plate, and the son has a sandwich. Shoes off, they fish with […] read more

Positive and joyous associations are prized by manufacturers. Cadbury’s Picnic Bar is a candy made with wafers, caramel, peanuts, and rice crisps, all covered in milk chocolate. Because it is lumpy, advertising wags dubbed it “Deliciously Ugly.” It’s a UK favorite. read more

Albert’s Le repos des chasseurs, aka Hunters’ Rest is a scaled down version of the Halt on the Hunt.  The simple menu is bread ,fruit, and wine.     read more

“Hot Grills” is a chapter that puns on picnic cookery and adultery; unpacking the picnic basket is a metaphor for undressing; eating is a metaphor for sexual intercourse. Picnics are he release from everyday routine and the displeasures of a sour academic marriage. “Picnickers who are determined to picnic will always find a spot somewhere. […] read more

Oeil-de-boeuf is Touchard-Lafosse’s pseudonym used to sign off on his gossip reports about Louis XIV’s court and Parisian society Oeil-de-boeuf is a circular window, often indoors, above a doorway. As a metaphor, it suggests gossip that is sexually tinged or embarrassing. Americans may celebrate 1776 as the year of their nation’s birth. Still, Georges Touchard-Lafosse […] read more

Ivory and Jhabvala imagine a “typical” gala Parisian garden party circa 1784. It was hosted by the Marquis de Lafayette for Thomas, then acting as American ambassador. Though de Lafayette was philosophically democratic, he was required to cultivate relationships with the Parisian fashionistas and aristocratic hedonism of pre-revolutionary France. The gala is fluff meant only […] read more

Goubaud’s pique-nique in La revue de la mode is an advertisement for picnic ware for upscale readers. As usual for picnics, this is a rural setting in an open forest. A country town can be seen deep in the background, as well as a chauffeur-driven electric Mercedes equipped with a picnic hamper and pannier de […] read more