Evans’s photograph of Robert Lowell and Caroline Blackwood suggests they are just another loving couple picnicking on the grass. Evans was aware of the couple’s tension but wrote to a friend, “I think they do a lot for each other, and it is a great pleasure to see.” Walker hints there was more to tell, but he did not follow through.
Lowell and Blackwood’s relationship was a torment. He suffered bouts of depression, and she was an alcoholic. Between the moments of manic romance and hostile altercations, their lives were no picnic.
Featured Image: Nice picnic while it lasted. Walker Evans. Robert Lowell and Caroline Blackwood picnicking in Kent (August 1973). New York: Metropolitan Museum of Art Walker Evens Archive
See Walker’s unpublished letter quoted in Nancy Shoenberger. Dangerous Muse: The Life of Lady Caroline Blackwood. New York: Talese/Doubleday, 2001; Belinda Rathbone. Walker Evans, A Biography. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2001. Rathborne assumes Blackwood and Evans had been lovers but had remained friends, a trait Blackwood seems to have cultivated.