See Theo Van Rysselberghe. The Family In The Orchard (1890). Collection State Museum Kroller-Muller,Otterlo, Netherlands
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...
Photograph of Leonid Andreyev in the English edition of The Red Laugh (1905). Andreyev’s antiwar story conjures the nightmare of Russia’s war in Manchuria. The novel is constantly morose, and each chapter is a fragment. First of which beginsAndreyev’s antiwar story...
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,...
Charcot, Doctor of Medicine, and polar explorer picnicked twice in Antarctica. Each time, he used the situation to divert his crew from the boredom of being ice-bound. Charcot does not mention what they ate or drank in 1904 but uncharacteristically notes the episode...
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...
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...
Potter borrowed freely from Aesop, Horace, and many other tellers of the “The Country Mouse and the City Mouse,” including Mary Belson Elliott’s The Mice and Their Pic Nic. “The dinner was of eight courses; not much of anything, but truly...
When the war began in 1914, picnic baskets were shelved. But when the peace was negotiated at Versailles in June 1919, wickers were dusted off and repacked. Signaling the change, The Illustrated London News editors suggested that it was time for picnicking—in the...
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.
