O’Hanlon supposes Box Hill picnic must be a combination of informality and gentility. Servants carry amenities for a regiment so that Emma, Knightley, et al. sits on a sparkling white cloth (with cushions, of course) drinking wine in crystal goblets, served by...
The picnic in Gondry’s Mood Indigo [L’Écume des jours] is his invention, a goofy addition to Boris Vian’s surrealistic novel L’Écume des jours. * It’s the love story of Colin, who is manic and unpredictable, and Chloe, who is stable until she meets...
In The Odyssey, the one-eyed giant Polyphemus is a cannibal who lives in a cave, but in Ethan Coen and Joel Coen’s O Brother Where Art Thou?, he’s at a picnic eating chicken, pickles, and drinking beer. The Coens claimed they did not read The Odyssey, but...
Pilcher’s Winter Solstice is about a Christmas picnic at which a pair of 60-somethings unexpectedly find love when it’s not expected. It’s heartwarming and sudsy! After much tribulation, Elfrida Phipps and Oscar Blundell, and friends gather at a...
Bruce Sargeant is a persona of Mark Beard. The picnic is a pleasantly simple: he is asleep, and she is awake, staring into space. A picnic basket sits idly in the far corner. Boy and Girl is large, 26.5 x 87 inches.
An intimate picnic in The Blind Assassin is a lover’s picnic on the grass that might fleetingly Genesis but more directly alludes to Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát “XI.” Iris Chase has returned from her wedding trip with Richard and is unhappy. By...
Laura Cunningham’s memoir A Place in the Country (2000) is suffused with romantic memories of a New York City park where she picnicked with her mother Rosie and eating lunch packed in a paper bag. The sandwiches were made with Wonder Bread, soft bread with no...
After much tribulation, Elfirida Phipps Oscar Blundell and friends gathered at a Christmas Eve picnic for the start of a happy future. The timing purposefully combines the celebration of the birth of Jesus Christ and the winter solstice that is the beginning of the...
Simic’s “Night Picnic” defies picnic expectations. Instead of daylight, there is a very dark vast starless sky. Instead of romancing or jollity, a man and woman sit on the grass without communicating. The narrator finds it slightly ironic that they...
Pantell’s painting Backyards is an urban scene behind the street façade. He finds a family sitting at a picnic table among the things he sees. The trees are bare in either early spring or late fall. But the hearty picnickers are taking in the city air in their meager...
