Halt During the Hunt

In 1737 the Paris Salon opened again in the Louvre after a gap of twelve years, and from then on it was held regularly. Carle van Loo showed this canvas there, more than two metres each way, signed and dated at the bottom in the middle, Carle Vanloo 1737. It had been painted for Louis XV, for the dining room of his petits appartements at Fontainebleau, the small private rooms where the king could eat away from the ceremony of the court. A second picture was made to hang with it, Charles Parrocel's Halt of Grenadiers, soldiers stopping to rest, now also in the Louvre. Both are meals in the open air, which suits a dining room.

Here a hunting party has spread a white cloth on the grass under tall trees. A servant in a red coat leans in with a napkin over his arm, there is a ham, a roast and dark bottles of wine on the cloth, and ladies in silk recline beside young men in embroidered coats. To the right a pack mule in plumed harness waits with the horses, and a spaniel sleeps curled up at the edge.

A legend grew up that the people at the centre are the king himself with three of the Nesle sisters, who became his mistresses one after another. The Louvre says the composition is the painter's own invention.