Though it is unmistakably a merienda at the beach, the title given for this painting in the Pitti Palace is Landscape with Bathers. The seashore is a tumultuous blend of barren, jutting rocks. But Carracci, the focus of which is a serene woman dressed in red sitting...
Leech’s joke here is the smugness of the father of the family (paterfamilias), who would rather inconvenience his family by camping on the beach instead of staying at a hotel. This large family putting up with the man is an implicit joke because no one protests...
Stowe’s The Pearl of Orr’s Island was published ten years after Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852) is a story of the people who speak in the vernacular of Maine, on the road to the Kennebec, below the town of Bath. Its basis is Shakespeare’s The Tempest,...
Trollope’s beach picnic in Can You Forgive Her (1864) is highlighted with a stern warning: “Yarmouth is not a happy place for a picnic. A picnic should be held among green things. Green turf is absolutely essential. There should be, if possible, rocks, old...
Fontane’s take on adultery in Effi Briest is a long, long sad story hinging on a beach-picnic-love affair. At first, it’s a recreational outing for Effi Briest and a friend, Major von Crampas. But soon, the recreation becomes a cover for lust. Though...
Luxe, Calme et Volupté, or Calm, Luxury, and Sensual Pleasure, was Matisse’s shimmering beach picnic at Saint-Tropez, was a belated response to Édouard Manet’s Luncheon on the Grass (1864). Painted in Saint-Tropez, Matisse’s atmosphere vibrates with glowing reds,...
Fanny Brandeis is a new woman, whose career comes first, and when Clarence Heyl, an unacknowledged suitor, asks her to picnic, she says that she’s so busy working that she has forgotten how. But the next morning, Fanny is sitting in a train heading out from...
Villa America, Sara, and Gerald Murphy’s home in Antibes looked down on La Garoupe, where they spread oriental carpets on the sand and drank wine and cold Veuve Cliquot. They were prodigious drinkers, but what they ate was a mystery. During the 1920s, their home was a...
It’s a momentous picnic for a young couple to understand they are courting in Colette’s The Ripening Seed. With the summer half gone, Phil Adebert (sixteen and a half) and Vinca Ferret (fifteen and a half) pack their picnic baskets and walk down the rocky cliffs like...
Dwight’s beach scene is no picnic. It’s a crowded Coney Island scene with a humous twist. Compare Dwight’s beach scene with John Sloan’s South Beach Bathers (1908) and Reginald Marsh’s Beach Picnic (11939). Featured Image: Mable Dwight’s Coney Island...
