The Life and Art of
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The Picnic
Samuel L. Gerry (1813–91)
Signed, lower left on rock: “S. L. Gerry”; undated, circa 1880
Oil on canvas (30 x 24 1/2 in.)
Collection of Michael Mooney and Robert Cram
It is not known what Gerry himself called this delightfully humorous genre scene. Its young and fashionably dressed subjects are so appealing that it seems as though Gerry would have exhibited it somewhere. In 1880 Gerry exhibited a closely related painting called Venturesome at the Boston Athenaeum, picturing a country girl crossing over a stream on a fallen tree trunk.
