Nicolas Lancret’s Picnic after the Hunt (1740c.)

Nicolas Lancret’s Picnic after the Hunt (1740c.)

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...
Luis Egidio Meléndez’s La Merienda (1771c.)

Luis Egidio Meléndez’s La Merienda (1771c.)

Meléndez was a painter of food, perhaps obsessively so. La Merienda or The Afternoon Meal is among his many still life works there is food ready to be eaten but without any people about to do so. In this instance, it’s a picnic without picnickers though someone...
Francisco Goya’s Merienda a orillas del Manzanares (1776)

Francisco Goya’s Merienda a orillas del Manzanares (1776)

Merienda a orillas del Manzanares [Picnic At the Edge of the Manzanares River] is a painting for a tapestry intended for the dining room of the Prince and Princess of Asturias in the San Lorenzo Palace in Madrid. Goya described the subject as a merienda, a snack, or a...
Touchard-Lafosse’s Pique-Nique Manqué (1776c)

Touchard-Lafosse’s Pique-Nique Manqué (1776c)

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...
A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac (1780c)

A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac (1780c)

Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with 10 million. Two centuries ago, an unidentified artist of the Lima School painted A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac, a happy picnic in which elegant aristocrats engaged...
A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac (1780c.)

A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac (1780c.)

Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with a population of 10 million. Two centuries ago, an unidentified artist of the Lima School painted A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac, a happy picnic in which elegant...
Francisco Bayeu y Subias’s Merienda en el Campo (1786)

Francisco Bayeu y Subias’s Merienda en el Campo (1786)

Bayeu’s Picnic in the Country [aka Merienda en el Campo] is a study of a proposed tapestry destined for the royal palaces of the Spanish monarchy now exhibited in the Prado’s Salon de Consejos. The picnickers have gathered around awhile cloth set on the...
Thomas Rowlandson’s Undertakers Regaling (1801)

Thomas Rowlandson’s Undertakers Regaling (1801)

Rowlandson’s Undertakers Regaling is a jibe at Robert Blair’s pious and maudlin “The Grave.”* Rowlandson does not mention Blair, but his audience would have recognized the allusion to his well-known and well-anthologized poem. Appended to...