It’s expected that picnics are happy. Here’s proof of how our expectations are met by five Nineteenth Century artists (and writers, too). Dora Spenlow’s birthday picnic party is probably Charles Dickens’s happiest and most romantic episode in The...
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...
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...
Winter picnics are few, and among the best is Elizabeth von Arnim’s on a freezing afternoon on a bluff above the Baltic. On a brilliant January day, Elizabeth’s birthday, she travels about three hours in a horse-drawn carriage over deep snow to a bluff...
Sloan’s picnics are happy, and he uses the picnic theme intermittently, beginning with The Picnic Grounds, especially with South Beach Bathers (1909), The Picnic on the Ridge (1920), and Picnic, Arroyo Hondo (1938). The Picnic Grounds is a summer scene where young...
Knight developed her style while at the Lamorna Art Colony in west Cornwall. She was nineteen years old and married to Harold Knight. Among more experienced artists and congenial surroundings, she realized the freedom of expression and technique that lasted...
One January night, John Sloan and a boozy group climbed to the top of Greenwich Village’s Washington Arch. According to Sloan, they toted balloons, candles, food baskets, wine, a pot for boiling water, and the makings of a campfire. Fictionalized or not, No one...
Situated on the bluff near St. Tropez overlooking the brilliant blue ocean, Bonnard’s picnic is one delightfully cheerful mood. Everything is gold, yellow, brown, and green around the woman, a man, a child, and a recumbent dog. It’s a palette suggesting happiness and...
Aaron Sissons, the protagonist of Lawrence’s Aaron’s Rod, leaves his wife and three young children to find himself. He’s unsuccessful. The “rod” is his flute, which he plays well enough to earn a modest living. It is also a pun on his...
Rackham’s final project was a set of illustrations for Kenneth Grahame’s The Wind in the Willows. He was suffering from rheumatism and dying of cancer. Yet, he completed a series of twelve scenes, two of which are of Ratty and Mole’s picnic on the...
