Bellows’s The Picnic is an example of a stylistic experiment with the technique of distorting the field of vision. He called Dynamic Symmetry. The picnic suggests a panoramic view of Cooper Lake, Woodstock’s water source. *
The picnic is a family affair. Bellows is fishing, his wife Emma is laying out a picnic, his daughters are playing, and a friend is napping. The picnic cloth laden with food is taken from the wicker basket. There are plates, but there is no identification of the food.
*Fishing and swimming are no longer permitted in the lake.
See George Bellows. Picnic [Cooper Lake, Woodstock, NY] (1924). The Baltimore Museum of Art. Baltimore