“My first Derby,” William Powell Frith explained, “had no interest for me as a race, but as giving me the opportunity of studying life and character.” after considerable preparation, Frith eventually painted the scene as an amusement tinged...
The Fūdo Falls is known for its spiritual and curative powers. A rope with tassels marks a sacred Shinto space. It’s among the most well-known scenic waterfalls in Japan. ButHiroshige’s vision of the falls is his own. Picnickers sit at a table below the falls. In the...
Six hikers have reached a plateau near Mansfield Mountain’s top and are ready to picnic just before sunset. Thompson titled the painting a Belated Party to provide tension, and we wonder if the picnickers will safely walk down the 4400-foot mountain in the...
Nathaniel Currier and James Merritt Ives’ lithographs The Pic-Nic Party and The Childrens Pic-Nic are picnics without food or drink. In The Pic-Nic Party, the central figure is a woman on a swing pushed by a young man, probably her beau. Just in front of her is a...
Picnicking in the Woods. Harper’s Weekly, Vol. II, September 4, 1858. Woodblock
Corot’s Idylle is picnicky. Pan’s presence usually suggests some sort of sexuality or chaotic action, but the scene is a joyful but serene. Featured Image: Musée des Beaux Arts, Lille
“Das Picnic” is an advertisement for Hamburger Tropfen, Dr. August König’s patent medicine, written in German by an American company in New Castle, Wisconsin. The ad’s image is a picture puzzle, and the legend is “Wo ist der Mann, welcher stets...
Williams’s Popular Song Hampstead Is the Place to Ruralise Hampstead Is the Place to Ruralise, All on a Summer Day (1861) is a comic hymn dedicated to the pleasures of Hampstead Heath. The euphemism “ruralizing,” like gypsying, had been in use since...
Egg‘s Traveling Companions is a testimony of the ease and comfort of train travel. The two elegantly dressed women, virtually mirroring images of each other, sit without even looking out of the window at the long view of the shoreline beyond. One reads the other...
Spitzweg’s Dejeuner sur l’herbe, Das Picknick, aka Luncheon on the Grass, is a happy middle-class person in the country. They sit, relaxing and enjoying each other’s company. The central figure, a portly man, toasts a woman in white, perhaps a bride. The company rises...
