Bellow’s A Day in June (1913) captures a picnicky day in Central Park, New York, where well-dressed crowds lounge in a meadow beyond the Plaza Hotel. Bellows painted his family in the left middle distance among those enjoying the summer day. He wears a dark tie and...
Hardy’s poems reveal an unhappy life with his wife, Emma Gifford. Perhaps the most definitive is “Where the Picnic Was,” in which he attempts to resolve their often “horrid shows” ends definitively: – But two have wandered far From...
Among the numerous illustrators of Paul Bransom’s standout because his portrayal of the character tends to look like animals they are. This is especially evident in the flyleaf illustration of “The River Bank.” Featured Image: Paul Bransom. “The River Bank,” In...
“Le Pique-nique,” a piano composition about 30 seconds long, is one of twenty-one very short musical interpretations in Sports et Divertissement [Sports & Entertainments] devoted to the happiness of people at play. Satie’s preface explains that two artistic...
During a luncheon on the grass at a suitably sylvan in Fontainebleau, Philip Carey, the protagonist Of Human Bondage, suffers a momentary fear that love will pass him by. It does in this instance, but after much hardship and bondage in an unrequited love affair, he is...
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...
Picnicking sandwiches and much more food play an important part in the courtship of Billy Roberts, a wagon driver, and Saxon Brown, a laundress, in Jack London’s Valley of the Moon. Intending to propose marriage, Billy and Saxon drive into the hills beyond...
Gaston Balande’s <em>Lunch on the Banks of the Seine </em> and <em>Camping</em> (1930s) Balande’s painting Déjeuner au bord de la Seine or Picnic by a River epitomizes Parisians at play along the Seine just at the start of World War I. Camping...
Claude Debussy and his daughter Claude-Emma (about ten years old) sit on a picnic carpet spread on the grass in a park. They are not dressed casually: he wears a summer suit, striped, white shirt with cufflinks, and a bow tie. He stares at wearing a summer dress,...
“The Piety And Eggs Of Paterson” is Dreiser’s version of a picnic gone wrong. It’s strategically placed at the start of A Hoosier Holiday because Dreiser meant it as a metaphor for what is to come and how his motor trip from New York to Terre...
