A Hunt Breakfast

In 1737 Louis XV ordered this canvas and a companion, The Stag at Bay, for the large dining room of his private apartments at Fontainebleau, and de Troy signed and dated it on a stone at the bottom, DE TROY 1737. A hunting party has stopped to eat at a long table in the open air beside a country house. Ladies in silk sit among the huntsmen, a man in a red coat leans across to serve, glasses are raised, a carriage waits behind and a dog sleeps on the grass.

What happened to the picture afterwards is a story in itself. In 1748 it was moved to the king's new dining room in the palace, in 1785 it was taken down and sent to the royal stores, and then its trail goes cold, probably in the sales of the Revolution. Under the restored monarchy Louis-Philippe, then Duke of Orléans and later king, claimed it from the royal museums as his family's property and kept it at his château at Eu in Normandy. In 1857, years after he lost the throne, it was sold with his collections at Christie's in London. It later belonged to Baron Maurice de Rothschild, and in 1990 it entered the Louvre in payment of inheritance tax. In 2024 it went back to Fontainebleau for a few months, for an exhibition on the royal hunts.