It’s unclear why Glaize selected a goûter champêtre or picnic for a portrait of his patron Alfred Bruyas. Perhaps Glaize meant to highlight Bruyas, dressed white, in a theatrical social setting as a man among many women. He spotlights his patron in the center,...
Hawthorne’s memories of Brook Farm were a childish and boisterous masquerade picnic party for a six-year-old boy. Hawthorne refused to participate and “lay under the trees and looked on.” A decade later, Hawthorne refashioned this party an unpleasant...
Hawthorne’s The Blithedale Romance is the story of Blithedale. On this communal farm, Mile Coverdale and Charles Hollingsworth vie for Priscilla’s affection, an ethereal waif as she seems to float rather than walk on the ground. One of Frederick...
At the Harmony Grove picnic dedicated to abolishing slavery, Thoreau read portions of what became his essay “Slavery in Massachusetts” completed later that year. The occasion was a Fourth of July celebration, and among Thoreau’s concerns was the fugitive Henry...
Leech’s joke here is the smugness of the father of the family (paterfamilias), who would rather inconvenience his family by camping on the beach instead of staying at a hotel. This large family putting up with the man is an implicit joke because no one protests...
One hundred and fifty-six miles west of Cincinnati, and thirty-two years after Francis Trollope settled there, David Broderick Walcott’s Hocking Valley Picnic (1854) makes picnicking ordinary. Twenty years of picnic progress made a substantial difference in...
Thompson’s painting has often been retitled. It has been Pic Nick, A Pic Nick, Camden, Maine], and is currently A Pic Nick in the Woods of New England. The menu included ham [with cloves], roast chicken, clams, potatoes or baked beans? [in a dish], bread, wine,...
According to family lore, Llewelyn photographed his wife Emma each year on her birthday, September 23, 1855. From a picnic point of view, it’s fortuitous because, to my knowledge, this is the first photograph ever of a picnic. *Llewelyn was a pioneer...
“My first Derby,” William Powell Frith explained, “had no interest for me as a race, but as giving me the opportunity of studying life and character.” after considerable preparation, Frith eventually painted the scene as an amusement tinged...
Frederic Ouvry’s invitation to a July garden party at his home in Fulham Green, London, insinuates that guests would gather with two celebrities: Albert Smith, the famous lecturer of “The Glaciers of Mont Blanc,” and Charles Dickens. The latter was...
