I love this image. And I love the idea of The Picnic as a jumping off point for an art show... But the rest of the works here? Meh. Not so much, really. So I decided to gather together a potluck of picnic images for us to snack on.→[More:]

James Tissot "The Picnic": I think this is lovely, but I'm particularly fascinated with the odd bottles arrayed in front of the man, and the black and white box-like thing with a handle. What is that? Also, what's up with his hat? It's very cool, but doesn't seem remotely Victorian (note that the guy in the background seems to have the same hat).
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Picnic table in lake. Something about the evanescence of pleasure? Or just a cool photo?
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Wonderful picnic quilt. So sweet, but it just blows me away. I'm amazed by everything, but the color nuances really impress me (batik?), and look at the quilting of the sky to suggest clouds or atmosphere... and the veins in the leaves, the mountain and the hills... Everything. I'd love to see this in person. (site)
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Now, this is my kind of picnic! Yum. (site)
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Picnic in the woods. So wonderfully absurd. It's all good - and the expessions, obviously stellar - but the lady's feet and the lion's feet add just that perfect piquant touch. (site)
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The unbearable sadness of vegetables. You know this site, but it's so cool that this came up on an image search of "picnic". Life is just a sweet, perishable thing dropped in the uncaring wastelands of ice and snow and sunless skies. Perfect.
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Major coolness: "Taira Koremochi killing the oni who attacked him after he fell asleep at a maple-viewing picnic", Hiroshige.
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Picnic in Thule. If I recall, it was shot around noon - in almost complete darkness.
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Let's stick with that theme for a minute. So nice. It reminds me of some wonderfully bizarre French art film set at a hotel that I saw once.
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Okay, this is great. Accidental art, basically; just a regular family photo with weird contrast and a little hypercolor makes this mad groovy. (I saved it from this Tripod site; it's even better with the hot pink background.)
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Wacky, engaging woodblock print. Read the little anecdote below the image here (scroll down a bit)
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Gun Moll Picnic. What more need be said? (site)
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Why does this rabbit feel the need to cool his lower extremities? Why is that raccoon so happy, and the coyote so relaxed? These are answers we may never know, but you did know there had to be a bunny, right?. (site)
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And... Beach Picnic. A shoutout to our peeps in Baltimore (but shouldn't that be "Picnic Down at the Shore"?). The slightly wintercast colors and spareness of this make me feel so happysad. (site)
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Picnic Pest fabric, $6.75/yd. Cute, but really just an excuse to show you Weenie Dogs. (site)
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And speaking of ants... This, apparently, is an ant holding a microchip. Whoah. (site)
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I can't quite figure this one out. Kinda cool, though. (site)

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There's something so affecting about old photographs, but especially, to me, family picnic portraits. They always seem so hopeful, so arranged and organized to have fun, and somehow so ominously vulnerable in their bucolic settings. The following are all from rootsweb:

The composition, chiaroscuro, and strange image artifacts (scratches? double exposure ?) of this one make it the most eerily poetic.

Doesn't this look like the beginning of a vintage porno reel? No? Just me, then.

This is very dramatic somehow. It looks like a still from an art film, doesn't it? What was said just prior to shooting this pic to cause these severe expressions?

I love the naivete of this image, the photographer blissfully oblivious of the object that seems to grow out of the lady's head. It's just a very jolly, if odd, photo, altogether.

Finally, rare photographic evidence of a depression-era eat-the-infant picnic banquet.

Not from rootsweb:

Even the child is wearing a hat. (site)

Picnic at a Barn Raising, 1890 (site).

This is beautiful. the croquet mallets in the foreground break my heart for some reason. (site)
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Finally, to bring us 'round full circle, kind of, Manet's Le Dejeuner sur L'Herbe , of course (site), and one of the many interesting riffs on it. (site).