Cartier-Bresson’s Alaverdi Monastery, Geprgis, (USSR) records a family having a roadside picnic while celebrating St. George’s Day. In the midground beyond them looms the Alaverdi Monastery. In the foreground, picnic food is neatly placed on a picnic...
Pickwick’s picnic on a hunt in Dingley Dell is part of an abortive hunting expedition. It’s famous for Pickwick getting drunk and Sam Weller’s discussion of veal pies, pronounced “weal” in Weller’s Cockney accent. This picnic is...
Mason’s The Piano Tuner is an adaptation of Conrad’s The Heart of Darkness. Edgar Drake, the piano tuner, is Charlie Marlow, and Anthony Carroll, Surgeon-Major in the British Army, then annexing Burma. Carroll is accused of setting up his state in defiance...
Pellen’s copy for Goyard’s picnic bag is mainly her invention. “The term itself,” she writes, “—a contraction of the expression “piquer (meaning to nibble) des nique (things of little value)” –was coined in the 13th century. During the Middle Ages, the picnic is a...
Boxer’s “Food for Excursions” is mainly a collection of carbohydrates, sweets, and fatty meats. Her suggestions include Riverside Sandwich, Sausage Sandwich, Potted Shrimp Sandwich, Toad Hall Steak Sandwich, Stuffed Eggs, River-Bankers Lunch,...
Petersen’s delightful obsession makes him happy. “Each painting,” he says, “has a different kind of mathematical solution; I’m not always able to solve it, but I try to work out a pattern of shapes.” Petersen’s esthetic is to amalgamate abstraction with realism and...
Grahame’s Dream Days are more evidence of his affinity for boats and picnics. Before Ratty’s picnic in Wind in the Willows, Grahame relates a pleasant dream about boating on a river in an Arcadian world. “I just go. But generally, it begins...
Hoffman’s Harvest Moon Walk is a masquerade picnic where revelers dress as vegetables. According to the Griswold Museum, “Hoffman’s eccentric depiction of strangely clad figures captures one of the Lyme Art Colony’s most festive rituals. On an...
The Picnic: A History is published by AltaMira Press, an imprint of Rowman & Littlefield (2013) Picnics are happy occasions and have always been a diversion from everyday cares. We think of the picnic as an outdoor meal, set on a blanket, usually in the middle of...
