Knight developed her style while at the Lamorna Art Colony in west Cornwall. She was nineteen years old and married to Harold Knight. Among more experienced artists and in congenial surroundings, she realized a freedom of expression and technique that lasted...
Makes you want to picnic in Central Park. See: Harold Altman. Picnic in Central Park (1985). Lithograph
As with many of Carrington’s surrealistic paintings, they are enigmas. Maybe they are snapshots of her inner life—a mix of personal relationships, dreams, alchemy, astrology, myth, and probably alcohol and drugs influence all. You may find the compositions appealing...
A glum, funny picnic. Featured Image: My tea runneth over. See: Andrea Kowich. Tea (1986), Acrylic on canvas
Hiroshige’s sly sense of humor turns this hanami topsy-turvy. What his title Cherry Blossom Viewing at Gotenyama does not suggest tis that hanami is a drunken brawl. Well into the afternoon, some of the men are fist fighting and providing spectacle for of nearby...
Majális is Pál Szinyei Merse’s staid Hungarian middle-class-style homage to Manet’s Dejeuner sur L’herbe. Everyone is buttoned-up. Though this is obviously a picnic, the title means “Mayfair.” Merse does not use the Hungarian loanword piknik or the expression jó s...
“Heroic Survivors of the Picnic.” is Gwen Raverat’s bittersweet memory of a miserable picnic. It’s the next-to-last anecdote in her memoir Period Piece: A Cambridge Childhood. I think she means to suggest that life was no picnic, but that she has no remorse. Despite...
This dour and static dinner on the grounds is Paul Sample’s Church Super. His take on his wife Sylvia’s hometown in Westmore, Vermont. At a glance the supper is ordinary, but many details tell otherwise. Though the minister is calling the picnickers for grace, many...
As early as the 16th century, the Dutch had no specific word for what is the equivalent of our picnic, but they were adept at alfresco entertaining. It’s evident in their paintings and in so-called emblem books, primers or handbooks, meant to instruct youthful...
Matisse completed The Joy of Life [Le Bonheur de Vivre] (1905-1906), a lovers’ picnic in a garden. There is a cloth, though there is neither food nor drink. Who was it that said, “Love is not all: it is not meat nor drink”? [Also see Matisse’s Calm, Luxury, and...