Picnic Party in the Woods

John George Brown's Picnic Party in the Woods presents a variety of figures engaged in summertime play and at leisure in a sun-dappled clearing in the woods. Ranging from an infant in his mother's arms to an elderly seated man leaning contemplatively on his walking stick in the shadows, the figures represent various stages of life. Indeed, the painting's shallow, stage-like setting and horizontal orientation may be intended to evoke the Shakespearean image of the world as a stage and people as actors playing out the "seven ages" of man, from infancy to old age. Happy childhood dominates, however, with the composition focusing on a girl, illuminated by full sunshine, who stands at the center of a circle of playmates. The group is playing the popular Victorian game "Oats, Peas, Beans". The song's refrain of "waiting for a partner" refers to courtship, the succeeding stage of life, as acted out by the courting couple on the far left and anticipated by the boy gallantly assisting a girl to surmount a boulder on the right. In the foreground, another boy, watched by two girls, weaves an ivy wreath like those already worn by several of the game players. The wreath embodies childish make-believe and dreams of glory, but the contented family group on the right, of which the young father too sports a wreath over his hat, suggests that the children's game of pretend courtship can be someday realized in the creation of a family.

In Picnic Party in the Woods Brown interwove his personal biography into an allegory of human life. The child in the center of the playing group is thought to be his younger daughter from his first marriage, and the family group on the right may represent Brown and his second wife, holding their first son, who was born in 1872. The happy state of the artist's family life at the time was paralleled by his professional success, which had been secured with popular images of rural childhood that were detailed and naturalistic, replete with narrative interest, and slightly sentimental. Brown continued to paint such works, of which the Terra Foundation's The Cider Mill (TF 1992.19) is an example. About the time he painted Picnic Party in the Woods, however, he began to turn his attention to another subject, poor urban youth, which he treated with the same optimism and moralizing spirit that characterize his country scenes.

In the wake of the American Civil War, images of happy childhood were popular as metaphors for regeneration and national futurity. Brown and such contemporary painters as Winslow Homer and Eastman Johnson, his neighbors in New York's Tenth Street Studio Building, pictured children in complementary rural settings, for in an age of increasing urbanism and industrialism nature was associated with wholesome values and national identity. Picnic Party in the Woods is unusual, however, in its careful inclusion of representatives of several different stages of life. Its overtly symbolic nature, as well as the closely detailed depiction of such natural elements as tree foliage and grasses, indicate the influence of Brown's first instructor in art, English painter William Bell Scott (1811–1890), an adherent of the Pre-Raphaelite movement advocating the representation of nature with obsessive fidelity for high moral purpose.

American Paintings, Watercolors and Drawings from the Collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz, Jr., Santa Barbara Museum of Art, Santa Barbara, California, June 23–July 22, 1973, no. 15 (as Waiting for a Partner). [exh. cat.]

American Paintings from Los Angeles Collections, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, May 7–June 30, 1974.

American Narrative Painting, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, October 1–November 17, 1974, no. 66. [exh. cat.]

Kaleidoscope of American Painting, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, William Rockhill Nelson Gallery, Kansas City, Missouri, December 2, 1977–January 22, 1978, no. 72. [exh. cat.]

An American Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Art from the Collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz Jr., National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (organizer). Venues: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C., October 4, 1981–January 31, 1982; Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas, March 19–May 23, 1982; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California, July 6–September 26, 1982. [exh. cat.]

Country Paths and City Sidewalks: The Art of J. G. Brown, George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, Springfield, Massachusetts (organizer). Venues: George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, Springfield, Massachusetts, March 19–May 21, 1989; National Academy of Design, New York, New York, July 10–September 10, 1989; Joslyn Art Museum, Omaha, Nebraska, October 13–December 3, 1989. [exh. cat.]

Domestic Bliss: Family Life in America, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, April 12–June 22, 1997.

Héroïque et le quotidien: les artistes américains, 1820–1920 (The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–November 30, 2001. [exh. cat.]

American Classics from the Collection, Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizer). Venue: Terra Museum of American Art, Chicago, Illinois, May 14–June 15, 2003.

Le Temps des loisirs : peintures américaines (At Leisure: American Paintings), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, July 15–October 31, 2007.

Le Temps des loisirs : peintures américaines (At Leisure: American Paintings), Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France (organizer). Venue: Musée d'Art Américain Giverny, France, April 1–October 31, 2008.

Art Across America, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; National Museum of Korea, Seoul, South Korea; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois (organizers). Venues: National Museum of Korea, Seoul, February 4– May 12, 2013; Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon, South Korea, June 7–September 1, 2013. [exh. cat.]

America: Painting a Nation, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, California; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Texas; Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Terra Foundation for American Art, Chicago, Illinois, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia (organizers). Venue: Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia, November 9, 2013–February 8, 2014. [exh. cat]

Hoopes, Donelson F. and Nancy Wall Moure. American Narrative Painting. (exh. cat., Los Angeles County Museum of Art). Los Angeles, California: Los Angeles County Museum of Art in association with Praeger Publishers, Inc., 1974. Text pp. 139–40; ill. no. 66, p. 141 (color as Waiting for a Partner).

Wilmerding, John et al. An American Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Art from the Collection of Jo Ann & Julian Ganz, Jr. (exh. cat., National Gallery of Art). Washington, D.C.: National Gallery of Art, 1981. Text pp. 54, 56, 118–19; fig. 47 (color), ill. p. 118 (black and white).

Ayres, Linda. "An American Perspective: Nineteenth-Century Art from the Collection of Jo Ann and Julian Ganz Jr." The Magazine Antiques (January 1982): 258–69. Text p. 267; fig. 4, p. 268 (black & white).

Hoppin, Martha J. Country Paths and City Sidewalks: The Art of J. G. Brown. (exh. cat., George Walter Smith Art Museum). Springfield, Massachusetts: George Walter Vincent Smith Art Museum, 1989. Text pp. 13, 51 (checklist); fig. 33, p. 42 (color).

Southgate, M. Therese. "The Cover." Journal of the American Medical Association 272:3 (July 20, 1994): 175. Text p. 175; ill. cover (color).

Cartwright, Derrick R. The Extraordinary and the Everyday: American Perspectives, 1820–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Text p. 13; fig. 6, p. 12 (black & white).

Cartwright, Derrick R. L'Héroïque et le quotidian: les artistes américains, 1820–1920. (exh. cat., Musée d'Art Américain Giverny). Chicago, Illinois: Terra Foundation for the Arts, 2001. Text p. 13; fig. 6, p. 12 (black & white).

Hoppin, Martha. The World of J. G. Brown. Chesterfield, Massachusetts: Chameleon Books, 2010. Text pp. 81, 83, 95, 231 note 35; ill. p. 82 (color).

Art Across America. (exh. cat., National Museum of Korea, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation for American Art). Seoul, South Korea: National Museum of Korea, 2013. (English and Korean versions). Text pp. 35, 163; ill. fig. 19, p. 36 (color), p. 162 (color).

America: Painting a Nation. (exh. cat., Art Gallery of New South Wales, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, the National Museum of Korea, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Terra Foundation for American Art). Sydney, Australia: Art Gallery of New South Wales, 2013. Text p. 108; ill. cat. no. 28, p. 109 (color).

Bourguignon, Katherine M., and Peter John Brownlee, eds. Conversations with the Collection: A Terra Foundation Collection Handbook. Chicago: Terra Foundation for American Art, 2018. Text p. 97; ill. p. 97 (color).