MEAL DURING THE HUNT (REPAS DE CHASSE), sketch
François Boucher (1704-1770)
1730s
Oil on canvas, 61 x 40 cm
Musée du Louvre, Paris
"Composed of four young lords, the group has paused in a wooded clearing. The servants in blue – colour of the king’s livery – place the dishes on the tablecloth, whilst another prepares the horses’ feed. A young black man in a turban, an essential component of Ancien Régime gatherings, brings the drinks. Seated in the centre of the scene and identifiable by the whiteness of his linen, one of the guests – tipsy, a knotted handkerchief on his head and his eyes half-shut – lends a comic tone to this hunt picnic… He holds in one hand a bottle of red wine and in the other proffers his glass like two of his friends, while a fourth hunter (on the left) nods off. The picturesque depiction of the three raised glasses is one of the best tributes a painter could give to wine. This detail is only equalled by that of the cork popping into the air in Jean-François de Troy’s The Luncheon of Oysters (Chantilly, Musée Condé).
Boucher’s sketch was part of his commission in the 1730s by the royal architects to decorate the private dining rooms of the young Louis XV. The first image that comes to mind, thanks to its “Flemish truculence”, is that of The Ham Dinner delivered to Versailles in 1735 by Nicolas Lancret (also from Chantilly); but also Halt During the Hunt by Carle Vanloo and A Hunt Breakfast by Jean-François de Troy, both painted in 1737 for the king’s dining room at Fontainebleau and both now housed in the Louvre. The hunters’ meal had been a fashionable theme since the 1720s.”
Source : Marie-Catherine Sahut, Grande Galerie, Le Journal du Louvre, Juy/August 2013
A FEW MORE 18thH CENTURY'S HUNTING MEAL PAINTINGS, EXHIBITED OR NOT*
Lemoyne, Hunting Picnic
Troy, A Hunting Meal
Van Loo, Halt during the Hunt
Goya, Picnic, detail
*Lancret, Picnic after the Hunt