Reginald Marsh’s Beach Picnic (1939)

Reginald Marsh’s Beach Picnic (1939)

This is a favorite among Marsh’s Coney Island images. In this instance, a collection of Venuses.  Compare it with John Sloan’s South Beach Bathers and Mabel Dwight’s Coney Island Beach. Featured Image: Beach Picnic (1939). Engraving.
Louis Le Brocquy’s A Picnic (1940)

Louis Le Brocquy’s A Picnic (1940)

Le Brocquy’s second wife, Anne Madden, remembers that the model in A Picnic was a friend. She preferred not to remember the woman in black and white (next to the umbrella) is Le Brocquy’s first wife, Jane Stoney. (She’s the same pensive woman in the portrait The Woman...
Zelda Fitzgerald’s A Mad Tea Party (1940s)

Zelda Fitzgerald’s A Mad Tea Party (1940s)

It’s unpicnicky. A Mad Tea-Party is agitated and foreboding, perhaps suggesting Fitzgerald’s unfulfilled (unrealistic) desire to become a ballet dancer. Despite the allusion to Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, this tea party is without humor.  If Fitzgerald is Alice,...
Beauford Delaney’s  The Picnic (1940) and Distant Horizons (1952)

Beauford Delaney’s The Picnic (1940) and Distant Horizons (1952)

Delaney‘s paintings during the Harlem Renaissance in the 1930s and 1940s were figurative. Over time, he shifted to abstraction during his life in Paris in the 1950s. Both The Picnic and Distant Horizons are no-food picnics. Featured Image: The Picnic. Oil on canvas....
Edward Ardizzone’s Picnic Outside of Brussels, May 1940

Edward Ardizzone’s Picnic Outside of Brussels, May 1940

Three soldiers picnicking on the grass lookup watching antiaircraft fire. Their easy postures belie their anxiety. This jarring juxtaposition of peace and war in 1940 is Edward Ardizzone’s record of the Nazi air force lightning attacks on the English and French...
Jacob Lawrence’s They Arrived in Pittsburgh (1941)

Jacob Lawrence’s They Arrived in Pittsburgh (1941)

The yellow basket and the yellow summer hat in They Arrived in Pittsburgh suggest that there will be a picnic. The grimy factory stacks spewing smoke suggest otherwise. The basket and hat symbolize the hope that in Pittsburgh (or any other industrial city), the...
Birger Ljungquist’s Luncheon on the Grass (1943- 1945)

Birger Ljungquist’s Luncheon on the Grass (1943- 1945)

Birger Ljundqvist’s Siesta Hartsena is a portrait of the artist taking a break. It has the simple appearance of a pleasant summer scene on a bluff above the sea. On the other hand, it may be more complex if the two women are the same in a different guise, one nude and...