Mora flourished between the 1900s and the 1930s. At the time of his death in 1940, he had lost his following and is now among the almost forgotten American painters. Featured Image: F. Luis Mora Twilight Picnic (1905 c.), oil on canvas.
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
Bellow’s A Day in June (1913) captures a picnicky day in Central Park, New York, where well-dressed crowds lounge in a meadow beyond the Plaza Hotel. Bellows painted his family in the left middle distance among those enjoying the summer day. He wears a dark tie and...
Among the numerous illustrators of Paul Bransom’s standout because his portrayal of the character tends to look like animals they are. This is especially evident in the flyleaf illustration of “The River Bank.” Featured Image: Paul Bransom. “The River Bank,” In...
“Le Pique-nique,” a piano composition about 30 seconds long, is one of twenty-one very short musical interpretations in Sports et Divertissement [Sports & Entertainments] devoted to the happiness of people at play. Satie’s preface explains that two artistic...
One January night, John Sloan and a boozy group climbed to the top of Greenwich Village’s Washington Arch. According to Sloan, they toted balloons, candles, food baskets, wine, a pot for boiling water, and the makings of a campfire. Fictionalized or not, No one...
Gaston Balande’s <em>Lunch on the Banks of the Seine </em> and <em>Camping</em> (1930s) Balande’s painting Déjeuner au bord de la Seine or Picnic by a River epitomizes Parisians at play along the Seine just at the start of World War I. Camping...
Leyendecker’s cover for The Saturday Evening Post portrays Main Street America, and it’s meant to be good fun. It’s a ‘typical” evocation * of a family on the way to a Fourth of July Picnic (1915). Mom carries a child waving a flag, Dad,...
Stettheimer liked whimsy and humor in her paintings but included jokes only her friends would recognize. Her outlook is surreal. She preferred the outdoors, like Picnic in Bedford Hills, because interiors are less joyful than an outdoor scene. Like Matisse’s The Red...
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.
