Kelvingrove Park is amazing place in the summer when all the flowers are in bloom. It’s a great place to spend time and perfect on romantic or family picnic. Today Glasgow is getting ready for picnic season.
There are Bengal Tigress in Glasgow`s Kelvingrove Park made by the animal sculptor Auguste-Nicolas Cain. Sculpture was presented as a gift to the city in 1867 by John Stewart Kennedy, which is also known as the Kennedy Monument, shows a female tiger about to feed her hungry cubs with her latest kill, a peacock. Kennedy was born in Glasgow and immigrated to New York, where he made his fortune, and on a visit to Paris in 1866 he visited sculptor Cain’s studio. The identical sculptures still stand today in Glasgow’s Kevingrove Park and Central Park in New York and it now stands in the Central Park Zoo along with what is thought to be Cain’s original in Les Jardins Tuileries in Paris. Historic link between three parks in Glasgow, Paris and New York.
‘on left’ Central Park Wildlife Conservation Center and Cain’s masterful bronze continues to delight zoo patrons , ‘on right’ Jardin des Tuileries (Tuileries Garden)
Sunshine, park and these three cities remand me Edouard Manet painting and time after the French Revolution in 1789, where royal parks became open to the public for the first time.
Edouard Manet – Luncheon on the Grass
Both Kelvingrove Park and Jardin du Palais Royal is a perfect spot to sit and picnic. Also the first usage of the word picnic is traced to the 1692 edition of Tony Willis, Origines de la Langue Française, which mentions pique-nique as being of recent origin; it marks the first appearance of the word in print. The term was used to describe a group of people dining in a restaurant who brought their own wine. The concept of a picnic long retained the connotation of a meal to which everyone contributed something. Whether picnic is actually based on the verb piquer which means ‘pick’ or ‘peck’ with the rhyming unique meaning “thing of little importance” is doubted; the Oxford English Dictionary says it is of unknown provenance. If picnic has french provenience I need to add more french paintings and this illustration of noblemen enjoying a picnic, from a French edition of The Hunting Book of Gaston Phebus, 15th century is the best !
I got to thinking a bit more about one more image “The Picnic” painting by Thomas Cole .
The artist Thomas Cole depicted “The Picnic” prior to 1860
Well click clock, time is running like crazy. I a just taking to myself stop thinking about park, art, and ………..run Ella run. I have only 40 minutes for running during my lunch and I need to go back to conservation studio, I have to change, clean up after run ………wow….. not be smell for the rest of the day.
Have a nice rest of the day…….. if sunny weather to stay with us for next week I will back to lunch running in the park and I will take you back to Victorian times where picnics were primarily a pursuit of the wealthy. 🙂
conservation with ella 