Rousseau was not thinking of a pique-nique when he wrote, “The turf will be our chairs and table, the banks of the stream our side-board, and our dessert is hanging on the trees.” He knew that pique-nique was an indoor meal for which friends shared the...
Hickey’s Memoirs included a picnic luncheon in Westminster Abbey during the coronation of George III in September 1762. His memory of the coronation is humorous if it’s true. Many of Hickey’s memories are lascivious, and he was regarded as a rake....
Goldsmith does not use the word picnic, but two such episodes in The Vicar of Wakefield exist. They are so obvious that in English Picnics, Georgina Battiscombe credits with the first “picnics” in English literature. If only he had used the word! Goldsmith...
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...
Goldsmith’s “Retaliation” left unfinished at his death, alludes to dining “en piquenique” with mentioning the word. Motivated for being slighted by his friends, Goldsmith decided to get even at the dinner table. Attempting to get even with slights endured from...
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...
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...
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...
Les Rêvieries du Promeneur Solitaire or Reveries of a Solitary Walker was written in 1776-78, left unfinished, and published posthumously in 1782. It’s composed of ten “walks” or personal essays; the fourth includes the episode about dining in Madame...
Rowlandson’s 1790 catalog of everyday life among the Brits includes a picnic scene. People looking at it would recognize an alfresco luncheon, but they would not have a name for it. What we call a picnic was unknown in English. Even if Brits knew the French word...
