The Garden of Paradise recasts in a contemporary Hortus Conclusus as an allegory of life before the Fall. Tucked into a protected garden, free from original sin, homage the Virgin Mary and the baby Jesus are at ease. The secluded garden offers serenity in a busy...
Passeri’s A Party Feasting in a Garden seems like a happy end to an alfresco luncheon. Young couples are deep in conversation, flirting, and courting, which suggests this is a garden of love. It is casual and innocent, though Passari is a moralist. Close examination...
Frederic Ouvry’s invitation to a July garden party at his home in Fulham Green, London, insinuates that guests would gather with two celebrities: Albert Smith, the famous lecturer of “The Glaciers of Mont Blanc,” and Charles Dickens. The latter was...
Coram’s View Of Mulberry in 1800 looks up to the rear of the house from the vantage point of “the street” because it was lined with slave quarters, of which houses are visible. Coram’s view suggests “the street” was a matter of...
Henry Wilcox’s garden party for his daughter’s wedding s reveals Edwardian hypocrisy and predatory sexuality. It’s a turning point in Foster’s Howards End. Forster scants the dinner itself, but when it is about to end, the guests are in stages...
Beal was an important American artist in the first half of the 20th century. He’s now almost forgotten. See Gifford Beal. The Garden Party (1920), oil on canvas. The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C.
Mansfield’s “The Garden Party” describes the Sheridan family’s Wellington, New Zealand, summer picnic garden party. The day is early summer, the weather ideal, the air warm and windless, and the blue sky has a veil of gold: “They could...
Arriving at Twelve Oaks garden party, Gerald O’Hara is pleased to say, “Well, John Wilkes, it’s a grand day you’ll be havin’ for the barbecue.” It’s momentous because it is the beginning of Scarlett and Rhett Butler’s...
Bowles’s In the Summer House is an absurd play, and she admirably proves the rule that some people do silly things at picnics. The action begins with a lawn picnic at which characters with tenuous relationships incessantly bicker. When Mr. Solares enters,...
Transforming the popular children’s song “Teddy Bears’ Picnic” into a death picnic is Trevor’s metaphor for portraying the 1980s generation as infantile and short on morality. Six months into their marriage, Edwin, a twenty-nine-year-old...
