Among Clermont’s recommendations for traveling is a cold Perigord pie. It’s an expensive food ordinary folks might not afford, but a favorite of the posh Pic Nic Club of London. clermont’s text is a translation of Menon’s 1755 Soupers de la cour. Pâté de...
Meléndez was a painter of food, perhaps obsessively so. La Merienda or The Afternoon Meal is among his many still life works there is food ready to be eaten but without any people about to do so. In this instance, it’s a picnic without picnickers though someone...
Samuel Foote’s comedyThe Nabob, now obscure, is the first linkage of picnic with the euphemism “nick-nack.” He used in the sense of dining en piquenique, which suggests familiarity. The alliterative corruption is meant to be humorous for those in the...
Goldsmith’s “Retaliation” left unfinished at his death, alludes to dining “en piquenique” with mentioning the word. Motivated for being slighted by his friends, Goldsmith decided to get even at the dinner table. Attempting to get even with slights endured from...
Merienda a orillas del Manzanares [Picnic At the Edge of the Manzanares River] is a painting for a tapestry intended for the dining room of the Prince and Princess of Asturias in the San Lorenzo Palace in Madrid. Goya described the subject as a merienda, a snack, or a...
Oeil-de-boeuf is Touchard-Lafosse’s pseudonym used to sign off on his gossip reports about Louis XIV’s court and Parisian society Oeil-de-boeuf is a circular window, often indoors, above a doorway. As a metaphor, it suggests gossip that is sexually tinged or...
Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with 10 million. Two centuries ago, an unidentified artist of the Lima School painted A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac, a happy picnic in which elegant aristocrats engaged...
It’s a picnic, but little else is known about this painting. Featured Image: Ramon Bayeu y Subias. La merienda (1780s). Oil on canvas. Museo del Prado,
Les Rêvieries du Promeneur Solitaire or Reveries of a Solitary Walker was written in 1776-78, left unfinished, and published posthumously in 1782. It’s composed of ten “walks” or personal essays; the fourth includes the episode about dining in Madame...
Morland’s painting The Anglers’ Repast, aka A Luncheon Party, is a scene of outdoor amusement and leisure. (There was as yet not word to identify this as a picnic.) Though the popular title is The Anglers’ Repast, the presence of fishing gear —...
Rowlandson’s 1790 catalog of everyday life among the Brits includes a picnic scene. People looking at it would recognize an alfresco luncheon, but they would not have a name for it. What we call a picnic was unknown in English. Even if Brits knew the French word...
Lima was a thriving major colonial town now grown into Chile’s capital and largest city with a population of 10 million. Two centuries ago, an unidentified artist of the Lima School painted A Merry Company on the Banks of the Rímac, a happy picnic in which elegant...
The etymological record of merienda is a blank between 1554 and 1626. After surfacing in Lazarillo de Tormes as a snack, it does not reappear until Quevedo’s El Buscon denotes a typical alfresco picnic. The change in meaning is unaccountable. In this instance,...
Bayeu’s Picnic in the Country [aka Merienda en el Campo] is a study of a proposed tapestry destined for the royal palaces of the Spanish monarchy now exhibited in the Prado’s Salon de Consejos. The picnickers have gathered around awhile cloth set on the...
It resembles a picnic; it’s recreational, but it’s lunch on a trout-fishing excursion on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. In Ernest Hemingway’s story “Big Two-Hearted River, Part Two,” Nick Adams breaks to have a sandwich. Nick is...
Among his many adventures traipsing about England, John Byng was proud of picnicking on the far side of High Force though the experience left him miserably wet. After spending an uncomfortable night in an inn, Byng hired a guide and, stuffing his pockets with eatable,...
When political rivals attacked, Robespierre replied: “If someone reproaches me, I wait for him here. It is here that he must accuse me, and not in picnics, in particular societies. Is there anyone? Let him get up.” No one stood, but he was eventually forced to resign...
Rowlandson’s Undertakers Regaling is a jibe at Robert Blair’s pious and maudlin “The Grave.”* Rowlandson does not mention Blair, but his audience would have recognized the allusion to his well-known and well-anthologized poem. Appended to...
Spilsbury does not use picnic (if she even knew the word) to describe the luncheon because it was not yet in everyday use. However, The Drinking Well in Hyde Park (1802) reminds us that the park has long been a popular gathering place for socializing and leisure....
Picnic, the English phonetic spelling of pique-nique, owes its introduction in English parlance to the Pic Nics, a London club that had a brief run from 1801-1803. We remember the Pic Nics because James Gillray lampooned and mocked them. We recognize that this was...
