James [Jacques]Tissot Holyday (1876c.)

James [Jacques]Tissot Holyday (1876c.)

The epitome of a Victorian picnic is Tissot’s Holyday. Tissot arranged a picnic of a family and friends in the garden of his home in St. John Woods. They sit beside a sparkling white cloth, china, flatware, a cake, sliced cheese on a platter, a platter of grapes, tea,...
George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876)

George Eliot’s Daniel Deronda (1876)

Eliot uses sport to illustrate gender relationships. Daniel Deronda has two archery picnics that do not meet the usual expectations of being joyous. Both archery picnics are metaphors in which Gwendolyn Harleth and the other women archers are contrasted to the goddess...
Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir (1877)

Emile Zola’s L’Assommoir (1877)

Zola’s pique-nique at the Moulin-d’argent [Silver Windmill] is not a picnic in our contemporary sense. According to French usage, it was a style of dining indoors. When Gervaise Macquart and Coupeau host their wedding party, each guest is expected to pay a...
George Rothrock’s  may Day Picnic at Fort McDowell (1877c)

George Rothrock’s may Day Picnic at Fort McDowell (1877c)

When Rothrock photographed this picnic party of soldiers and their wives and companions in the desert at Fort McDowell, that temperature was probably 92 degrees, give or take. The group had gone to the desert to celebrate May Day, and Rothrock accompanied them. His...
Leonard Dakin’s family family picnics (1880s-1890)

Leonard Dakin’s family family picnics (1880s-1890)

Dakin’s photographs are a record of the family in the 1880s and early 1890s in Cherry Valley, Otsego County, New York According to Pauline Dakin Taft,the family “had a passion for picnics. There were picnics all the time at any time of day. Perhaps the lake was a...
Guy de Maupassant’s

Guy de Maupassant’s (1880)

De Maupassant knows that the picnic of this story is not the picnic you expect. Instead of grass, the setting is s a four-horse coach carrying ten passengers fleeing the Prussian army advancing on Rouen for safety at Le Havre. Instead of being congenial, all but one...
Guy De Maupassant’s “Une Partie de Campagne” (1881)

Guy De Maupassant’s “Une Partie de Campagne” (1881)

Maupassant uses the phrase une partie de campagne as a euphemism for an outdoor picnic. It’s a sad story about a romantic love that fizzles during a holiday celebrating a birthday, when the Dufours, a middle-class Parisian family, spend a day along the Seine at the...