Picnic by the Sea

Picnic By the Sea presents a vista from Point Lobos, California, looking out towards the Golden Gate. Harold Nelson writes of the present work, "Thomas Hill, in Picnic by the Sea of 1873, presents an image of seaside play and relaxation. An established portraitist in San Francisco, Hill in 1866 traveled to Paris to study briefly with landscape painter Paul Meyerheim, who greatly encourged his developing interest in landscape subjects. Hill returned to California in 1870, and from then until his death in 1908, he frequently painted the magnificently dramatic California coast and the lofty peaks of the High Sierras. In Picnic by the Sea, Hill depicts a pastoral outing that more frequently takes place, at least pictorially, in the shelter of a wooded glade. But there the picnickers perch atop a dramatic, exposed seaside bluff. The vulnerability of their position is assuaged by the sunny sky and quiescent sea. Winslow Homer employed a similar juxtaposition in Long Branch, New Jersey of 1869 (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston). Hill might have been familiar with this work, either through the original or through a related series of line engravings." (Sounding the Depths: 150 Years of American Seascape, New York, 1989, p. 58)