Nell Choate Jones’s Church Supper (1945c.)

Nell Choate Jones’s Church Supper (1945c.)

Jones’s Church Supper suggests the celebration of an African American picnic supper, sometimes called Dinner on the Grounds. An event like this is held in summer, usually on the first Sunday in August. It was always, and still is, a revival meeting. And while...
Sidney Nolan’s  Ned Kelly/Bush Picnic (1978/1979)

Sidney Nolan’s Ned Kelly/Bush Picnic (1978/1979)

Nolan’s fantasy is that Australia’s most renowned bushranger Ned Kelly enjoyed a bush picnic. His source is probably J. J. Keneally’s sympathetic biography The Complete Inner History of the Kelly Gang (1929), based on which Nolan made two series...
Paul Cadmus’s  What I Believe  (1947-1948)

Paul Cadmus’s What I Believe (1947-1948)

Cadmus’s What I Believe (1947-1948) is a beach picnic without food, inspired by E.M. Forester’s essay of the same-named. Forster is the dark man reading a book with the red cover in the lower left foreground. The figures are based on some of Cadmus’ friends and former...
Leonora Carrington’s Pastoral (1950)

Leonora Carrington’s Pastoral (1950)

As with many of Carrington’s surrealistic paintings, they are enigmas. Maybe they are snapshots of her inner life—a mix of personal relationships, dreams, alchemy, astrology, myth, and probably alcohol and drugs. You may find the compositions appealing dream-visions...
Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece  (1952)

Gwen Raverat’s Period Piece (1952)

“Heroic Survivors of the Picnic.” is Gwen Raverat’s bittersweet memory of a miserable picnic. It’s the next-to-last anecdote in her memoir Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood. I think she means to suggest that life was no picnic but that she...
Euan Uglow’s Musicians (1953)

Euan Uglow’s Musicians (1953)

Uglow titled this Musicians, but it’s very like a picnic. Featured Image: Musicians (1953) oil on canvas.  Swansea, England: National Museum of Wales
Euan Uglow’s Musicians (1953)

Euan Uglow’s Musicians(1953)

Uglow’s Musicians (1953) is a neo-representation depiction of figures in a pastoral setting. It’s s a picnicky pastoral of men and women enjoying themselves in a pastoral setting. The central figure plays guitar while others sing and dance. There is no food or wine....