Georgina Battiscombe’s 1949 English Picnics is a pioneering study of English picnics in literature and art that has become a go-to standard.
Battiscombe asserts the English picnicker “is a devotee of the simple life; for a brief moment, he apes the noble savage. Before the Romantics had made nature fashionable, no one connected the idea of pleasure with the notion of a meal eaten anywhere except under a roof.” If Battiscombe truly believed this hyperbole about going primitive, she did not follow up when selecting the example of such picnicking.
Battiscombe’s writing carries her distinctive, authoritative voice. Her examples and explanations are first-rate. However, what she explains here does not line up with examples elsewhere.
Featured Imae: Laura Knight. The Picnic (1912). Oil on Canvas. the location is probably Newlyn or Lamorna, Cornwall.
See Georgina of Battiscombe. English Picnics. London: Harvill Press,1949.