Rowlandson’s 1790 catalog of everyday life among the Brits includes a picnic scene. People looking at it would recognize an alfresco luncheon, but they would not have a name for it. What we call a picnic was unknown in English. Even if Brits knew the French word...
Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with a population of 10 million. Two centuries ago, an unidentified artist of the Lima School painted A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac, a happy picnic in which elegant...
Bayeu’s Picnic in the Country [aka Merienda en el Campo] is a study of a proposed tapestry destined for the royal palaces of the Spanish monarchy now exhibited in the Prado’s Salon de Consejos. The picnickers have gathered around awhile cloth set on the...
Among his many adventures traipsing about England, John Byng was proud of picnicking on the far side of High Force though the experience left him miserably wet. After spending an uncomfortable night in an inn, Byng hired a guide and, stuffing his pockets with eatable,...
When political rivals attacked, Robespierre replied: “If someone reproaches me, I wait for him here. It is here that he must accuse me, and not in picnics, in particular societies. Is there anyone? Let him get up.” No one stood, but he was eventually forced to resign...
Rowlandson’s Richmond Bridge, Surrey documents a picnic party at low tide on the Thames’s sandy shore opposite Hampton Court. It was common for Londoners to hire a water taxi to transport picnicker out of the city and into the country for an afternoon of eating and...
