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 among friends who sit dining in an open, sunlit grassy lawn. The bright colors of the picnickers lead the eye to them first, and only after does the viewer’s eye refocus on the sleeping artist in the foreground and the figure of Pan standing above him playing his panpipes. Refocusing again, it is apparent that a woman in a blue dress, sitting apart, may be looking at the sleeping figure of an artist. It is unclear if she looks with some feeling of love or friendship. But the artist is certainly available to her, and his proximity to Pan may be an implicit statement of Allen’s creative role as the artist or an allusion to Allen’s sexual preference.
The picnickers do not see or hear Pan’s pipe, though it may be that the woman in blue senses his presence. Whatever the case, it is a mystery. The sign on the tree declares, “Trespassers will be Arrested.”
See George Warner Allen. Picnic at Wittenham (1947-1948), oil and tempera on canvas. Tate Britain, London.