Picnic

In contemporary usage, picnic can be defined simply as a pleasure excursion at which a meal is eaten outdoors, ideally, taking place in a beautiful landscape.

Picnics in the fine arts

Perhaps the most famous depiction of a picnic is Le déjeuner sur l'herbe, painted by Edouard Manet in 1862.

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Edouard Manet - 1862

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In literature

• From Charles Dickens' The Mystery of Edwin Drood: "...Miss Twinkleton (in her amateur state of existence) has contributed herself and a veal pie to a picnic." (Project Gutenberg Entry: http://gutenberg.net/etext/564)
• In Jane Austen's novel Emma at the Box Hill picnic which turned out to be a sore disappointment, Frank Churchill said to Emma: "Our companions are excessively stupid. What shall we do to rouse them? Any nonsense will serve..." (Project Gutenberg Entry: http://gutenberg.net/etext/158)
• In Fernando Arrabal's Picnic in the Field the young and inexperienced soldier Zepo is visited unexpectedly by his devoted parents. Despite the war setting they have a cheerful picnic together.
• The utopian novel Roadside Picnic by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, which was written in 1972, was the source for the film Stalker (1979) by Andrei Tarkovsky. The novel is about a mysterious "zone" filled with strange and often deadly extraterrestrial artifacts, which are theorized by some scientists to be the refuse from an alien "picnic" on Earth.

In film

• The film Picnic was a multiple Oscar winner from 1955.
• With Picnic at Hanging Rock (1975), Peter Weir constructs a film of haunting mystery. Three girls and one of their teachers on a school outing mysteriously disappear. The only one that is later found remembers almost nothing.
• Baji on the Beach, Gurinder Chada (1993). The German version of the film is titled Picknick on the Beach. Nine Indian women of various ages flee away from their everyday life into a joint excursion to the English resort town of Blackpool. A rather unharmonious journey because conflicts between generations raise emotions to a fever pitch.

In music

• In 1906 the American composer J. K. Bratton wrote a musical piece originally titled "The Teddy Bear Two Step". It became popular in an 1908 instrumental version renamed "Teddy Bears Picnic", performed by the Arthur Pryor Band. The song regained prominence in 1932 when the Irish lyricist Jimmy Kennedy added words and it was recorded by the then popular Henry Hall (and his BBC Dance Orchestra) featuring Val Rosing (Gilbert Russell) as lead vocalist, which went on to sell a million copies. Teddy Bear Picnic resurfaced again in the late 1940s and early 1950s when it was used as the theme song for the Big Jon and Sparkie children's radio show. This perennial favorite has appeared on many children's recordings ever since. lyrics and audio from the BBC
• "Stone Soul Picnic", by Laura Nyro (released in 1968) It was a major hit for the group Fifth Dimension. cover version by Swing Out Sister