PicnicWit is an exploration of picnics, the kinds you read about, look at, or enjoy in films. Many are ordinary and follow the standard and very familiar picnic script like Jane Austen’s Box Hill picnic in Emma; Charles Dickens romantic picnic birthday party in David Copperfield;  and Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. Among […] read more

Aphorism: a concise statement of a principle,  a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment, a witty observation or statement, sometimes serious or humorous. “I hope it doesn’t rain tomorrow,” said Scarlett.  “It’s rained nearly every day for a week. There’s nothing worse than a barbecue turned into an indoor picnic.”         […] read more

Pique-Nique was originally a man’s name. It was coined in 1649 by an anonymous author satirizing a French soldier and his cohorts who gave up their martial duties for the pleasure of drinking and gourmandizing. Since 1694, we have supposed that piquenique is a word without a source, a mystery defined in the lexicographer, Gilles […] read more

Five Glum Film Picnics tells that picnics are not always. We expect picnics to be happy and vivacious, but this expectation is sometimes upended. In these instances, filmmakers depict the characters’s moodiness as exhibited at a picnic. Ordinarily, there is an expectation of joy and congeniality, but glum picnics turn that expectation topsy-turvy.   Susanna […] read more

Alan J. Pakula’s Sophie’s Choice includes two picnics: one in Prospect Park’s Vale of Cashmere and the other on the porch roof of their rooming house. Both are missed opportunities, especially because of Styron’s description of how Sophie Zawistowska’s picnics mask her despair and try to blot out the horror of her time in Auschwitz. […] read more

Food is untouched, and wine is untasted when Joe and Claire’s picnic is interrupted by a runaway balloon. Michell’s adaptation of Enduring Love makes a show of champagne, but the food is unspecified. McEwan’s novel includes an expansive menu for the novel consisting of a picnic of black olives, mixed salad, mozzarella, focaccia, and white […] read more

Suds. Hamptons, New York, and Paris. Money. Two middle-aged beauties find romance and love. Perfect beach house. Perfect weather, Perfect wine. Aw shucks. “Erica and Harry sit on a blanket on a cloudy day, having a picnic lunch. Harry is telling Erica a story, and she screams with laughter.” Then it rains. The run to […] read more

Paul Theroux’s O-Zone is a sci-fi satire of the decline of American civilization caused by environmental degradation. It opens as a New Year’s Eve celebration in the degraded O-Zone, a no-go area contaminated by radiation, noxious chemicals, and inhabited by savage survivors of the environmental holocaust. Gathered in the O-Zone, or Outer Zone, are eight […] read more

The setting is Provence, where Jean Cadoret and his family try to make a go of living on a property his wife Aimee inherited. Cheated, betrayed, and bankrupted, the project fails. This picnic is one of the family’s happier moments. See: Claude Berri. Jean de Floret (1986). Screenplay by Claude Berri, Gérard Brach, and Marcel […] read more

Phoebe Quirke has asked St.John Strafford to a picnic. It’s not the best weather for a picnic. It’s October, the days are cool, and the sky is usually partly sunny. They have been awkward lovers; partly because Phobe is diffident and Strafford is taciturn. They have made love three times, and now Phoebe is pregnant, […] read more

Billy Wilder’s The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes is mostly a comedy comprised of mismatched episodes, the second of which concerns a search for a secret British laboratory in Scotland and an attempt by a German spy to seduce Holmes. The search leads Holmes, Watson, and Gabrielle Valldon  (the spy as yet unmasked) to Loch […] read more

Falter was a commercial artist and illustrator mostly known for his Saturday Evening Post magazine covers. Featured Image: John Philip Falter Prairie Grove Picnic. Oil on Linen (1947)   read more

These clever Pussies have come for a picnic in a motor car, they are on their very best behaviour, and have brought a tablecloth and plates with them, and one thing I am certain, their plates will be quite clean when the have finished dinner, because they are sure to like them until they are […] read more

Winnie-the-Pooh’s Picnic Cookbook, Inspired by A. A. Milne, purports to be for is a tongue-in-cheek adult cookbook masquerading in kid’s clothing. Picnics are loosely linked to Milne’s Pooh stories, and the picnics suggested are the likes of: “Expotition Picnic,”; Birthday Party Picnic; Kid’s Picnic; and Beach Picnic.” For adults, suggested menus require sophisticated assistance, and […] read more

Truffaut’s title Les deux Anglaises et le continent refers to two English girls, Muriel and Anne Brown, and their lover, Claude Roc, a Frenchman. It’s a confusing title until it is explained that the girls affectionately call Claude “le continent. ” Even so, it’s a ditsy commentary on their relationship that is a jumbled ménage […] read more

Elizabeth Newton and her children enjoy a birthday party in Tissot’s garden in St. John Wood, London. The partygoers sit on cushions beside a picnic cloth laden with food and drinks prominently placed in the immediate foreground. The children are of secondary importance. Tissot was in love with Newton, and they were partners for five […] read more

Featured Image: Russell Lee. The Blessing at Dinner on the Grounds at the All-Day Community Sing, Pie Town, New Mexico (1940). Courtesy Library of Congress. LC-USF33- 012785-M5 [P&P] Also, Dinner on the Grounds, Nell Choate Jones. Church Supper (1945) Greenville Museum of Art Greenville, SC; Edna Lewis’s The Taste of Country Cooking \ (1977); Paul […] read more

Dickens vented his distaste for English travel food, especially sandwiches served in cold, comfortless train stations. The Boy at Mugby Station working in h Refreshment Room gleefully tells anyone who will listen (or not) how awful the refreshments (if they can be called refreshments are: “You don’t know what I mean? What a pity! But […] read more

Trollope’s Phineas Redux is the fourth book in the Phineas Finn Series. It was among his most popular novels. Numerous hunt scenes and references suggest Finn’s plight evading his enemies. A halt during a fox hunt provides the opportunity for a simple picnic lunch in the field. Featured Image: Frank Holl’s illustration caption is “You […] read more

Pickwick’s picnic on a hunt in Dingley Dell is part of an abortive hunting expedition. It’s famous for Pickwick getting drunk and Sam Weller’s discussion of veal pies, pronounced “weal” in Weller’s Cockney accent. This picnic is served under the welcome shade of an old oak to make it easy for Pickwick, who suffers from […] read more

Frederic’s The Damnation of Theron Ware, or Illumination, is a satire of American Methodism. The narrative explores the mid-life crisis of Theron Ware, a married Methodist Episcopal pastor who falls for Celia Madden, an Irish Catholic, in a small town in New York State. During a staid, conservative Methodist camp meeting, Ware sneaks off to […] read more

Hiroshige aims to depict activity relevant to the moment in a specific landscape. In this respect, his scenes in Japan correlate with J.M.W. Turner’s picturesque landscapes of the United Kingdom. While picnicking under the blooming cherry trees at Gotenyama, too much food and sake instigate a drunken brawl. Compare this with the rowdy sailors at […] read more

Lubbock’s Portrait of Edith Wharton is definitive: “Edith settled, the strapped hampers (which she likes to think of as ‘corded bales’) set side by side, the rugs spread, the guests ‘star-scattered in their places: poetic allusion is never amiss at these symposia. Nobody at this point is to help her; she unpacks, distributes, and apportions […] read more

Doyle was knighted for his service during the Boer War (1899-1902), in which he served as a medical doctor. Much of Doyle’s The Great Boer War was written in hospital tents where he treated the wounded and diseased. The memories are a nationalistic view of a war unpopular in Britain, making the case that war […] read more

Corny picnic satire was in vogue among English music before Gilbert and Sullivan’s 1871 Thespis, or The Gods Grown Old. Typical “The Pic-Nic” is sung to the air of “Here’s the Maiden of Bashful Fifteen” from Sheridan’s The School for Scandal. Its inclusion in Arliss’ The Melodist, a collection of popular songs, suggests opportunities for […] read more

Colter’s The Secret Garden Cookbook is mainly a collection of high calory, sugary and fatty foods. She starts with Burnet’s essential food path and never wanders far off. “You can trifle with your breakfast and seem to disdain your dinner,” Burnet writes, “if you are full to the brim with roasted eggs and potatoes and […] read more

Miel’s halt on the hunt and repas de chasse depicts hunters stopped by a rustic inn. In the Prado’s La Merienda, hunters have spread a cloth beside their horses and are settling in to relax. This is a perfunctory meal of sliced ham, cheese, bread, and wine. Unlike Watteau’s fashionable hunters and their ladies in […] read more

David’s “Indian Picnics: Picnic at Kutub Minar” is an anecdote related in Summer Cooking (1955). This moonlight picnic is held at Kutub Minar, a leaning tower (238 feet) now in ruins just outside Delhi. David says that if the picnic was wrong from the start, it was not the moonlight or the food, but the […] read more

McGinnis’s’ Blind Faith is dramatized reportage of a New Jersey murder case in which Rob Marshall was accused of hiring hitmen to free himself to marry his flamboyant mistress. According to McGuiness, when Marshall thought something was wrong with one of his tires, he pulled off the Garden State Parkway into a pitch-black, deserted picnic […] read more

Hoffman’s Harvest Moon Walk is a masquerade picnic where revelers dress as vegetables. According to the Griswold Museum, “Hoffman’s eccentric depiction of strangely clad figures captures one of the Lyme Art Colony’s most festive rituals. On an October evening, merrymakers arrived at Florence Griswold’s house imaginatively costumed as fruits and vegetables. The marchers, a mix […] read more

Two picnics engage viewers to admire Lindsay’s unmistakable style. The Picnic, done in 1944) is a joke that upends expectations. Half of the women picnickers are naked. The Duke’s Picnic (1945) is a typical picnic where all the guests are clothed. Viewers are discouraged from finding the picnic feast. Featured Image: The Duke’s Picnic (1945), […] read more

The Courtship, Marriage, and Pic Nic Dinner of Cock Robin. To Which is Added, Alas! The Doleful Death of the Bridegroom is the first outdoor meal named a picnic in our modern sense. When John Harris retold the old story of Sparrow’s fateful murder of Cock Robin,  and named the birds’ outdoor wedding party a […] read more

Celentano’s painting Picnic depicts working-class people happily at leisure. The picnic is simple without frills or elegance. A family picnic in the country. the picnic blanket is spread out under a tree. Seems to be several families, and they all cluster on or around the blanket: in the center, a woman, her head back and […] read more

Bearden transports Omar Khayyám’s Persia to the Tropics for his take on “Quatrain XI” from The Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám. But the man is Persian and the woman is black. Though the poem suggests sensuality, Bearden presents the poet clothed but the woman naked, except for a body sash and a head turban. It’s still […] read more

Among the best picnics, adult or otherwise, A Picnic in the Woods sets an example of optimistic picnic fun.  It begins with the usual refrain: “It’s a beautiful day for a picnic!” as Mickey Mouse, Minnie Mouse, and Mickey’s nephews Ferdy and Morty cram into the blue convertible for a day in the country. Soon, […] read more

Donald Duck’s beach picnic makes a joke of expectations. Intending a pleasant day at the beach, Donald is upset and bedeviled with turmoil. Especially the ants, dressed in war paint like “Native Americans,” steal Donald’s picnic. The idea is meant to be comic. Ants at a picnic are always fun, but in this instance, masquerading […] read more

Camp meetings are an American tradition, the first of which seems to have been organized by James McGready (c.1760–1817) based on the Scottish Presbyterian outdoor revival meetings. These meetings were introduced to England in 1807, especially by the Methodists. The camp meetings were marathons that lasted several days. A short version of the camp meeting […] read more

“The Curate’s Friend” is one of two of Forster’s coming-out stories published in The Celestial Omnibus. In “The Story of a Panic,” Pan appears in a whirlwind and rapes a young boy. In “The Curate’s Friend,” a Faun enamors Harry the Curate and becomes a life-long friend. Telling this story long after, Harry leaves the […] read more

Wharton’s Summer is the story of a summer romance doomed to failure that begins with seduction at a picnic. When Charity Royall, a small-town girl of seventeen, falls for Lucius Harney, a socially upscale architect, she loses her innocence at a picnic. The outing and picnic lunch are critical moments in the narrative suggesting the […] read more

An exception to the unremitting cold in Wharton’s Ethan Frome is a summer church picnic when Ethan and Mattie Silver first feel love for one another. When Mattie is forced to leave, Frome drives her to the train station. Along the way, they stop by the frozen Shadow Pond and look out on the frozen […] read more

Bainbridge’s idea of picnic fun is a biting satire of an English company picnic during which everything that can go awry does, including murder. Two friends, Brendass and Freda, organize a picnic for the employees at an Italian wine and spirits shop on Hope Street in London. An ulterior motive is Freda’s dreamy intention of […] read more

Washington’s “all day meeting” is also known as “dinner on the grounds.” It agrees with versions of meetings by William A. Clary, Edna Lewis, Bebe Meaders and maya Angelou. I’ve cited Washington’s whole passage because it’s so full of detail and energy In Macon County, Ala., where I live, the coloured people have a kind […] read more

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 to the occasion. Largely forgotten now, he was an important German […] read more

John Fowles’s The Cloud takes its title from Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona (Act 1, Scene 3): “O, how this spring of love resembleth The uncertain glory of an April day,  Which now shows all the beauty of the sun, And by and by a cloud takes all away! As a group of English, five adults […] read more

Hughes used a picnic as a theme for a family portrait of the Pattinson family. The title he gave was A Birthday Picnic – Portraits of the children of William and Anne Pattinson of Felling, near Gateshead. A red table with food in the left background, but it is unclear whose birthday is being celebrated. […] read more

Shahn’s Sunday School Picnic, Ponderosa Homesteads, North Carolina (1937); http://www.loc.gov/pictures/resource/fsa.8a17327/ For a contrast, see The Bad Seed. read more

Gerasimov’s celebration of a very abundant harvest is propaganda. Soviet farms were not producing well, and the nation suffered chronic harvest shortages. Stalin’s propaganda program deemed otherwise, and the artists and writers were instructed to portray a land of plenty and prosperity according to the rules of Social Realism. Gerasimov’s farmers are happy and well-fed […] read more

A more placid and joyful allusion to the myth of Pan is George Warner Allen’s adaptation in painting, Picnic at Wittenham (1947-1948). It is a pastoral with an edge and suggests his homosexuality. Allen’s adaptation of Jean-Antoine Watteau’s picnicky social entertainments, Assembly in a Park (1716-1717) or The Music Party (1718-1719). Allen’s group is a picnic […] read more

Positive and joyous associations are prized by manufacturers. Cadbury’s Picnic Bar is a candy made with wafers, caramel, peanuts, and rice crisps, all covered in milk chocolate. Because it is lumpy, advertising wags dubbed it “Deliciously Ugly.” It’s a UK favorite. read more

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 embarrassing. Americans may celebrate 1776 as the year of their nation’s birth. Still, Georges Touchard-Lafosse […] read more