Halt of the Hunt

The Artist: Carle (Charles André) Vanloo came from an important family of Dutch painters who made their fortune in France: his grandfather, Jacob, had been a leading figure in depicting genre subjects in Amsterdam, and his father, Louis-Abraham, painted religious subjects in southwestern France. Like his older brother, the successful painter Jean-Baptiste, Carle traveled to Italy early in his training and studied in Rome with Benedetto Luti. By 1720 he had returned to Paris, where he won the Prix de Rome in 1724. After his reception by the Académie Royale in 1735, he rose quickly with important commissions from the crown for historical, religious, portrait, and genre subjects. He exhibited at nearly every Salon between 1734 and 1765.

The Commission: Louis XV (reigned 1715–74), an avid hunter, especially enjoyed the vast hunting grounds at Fontainebleau, and as part of a major building project to make the antiquated château more comfortable, he commissioned a suite of pictures by Jean François de Troy (1679–1752), Charles Parrocel (1688–1752), and Vanloo to decorate the large dining room of his private apartments on the ground floor. On one wall, opposite the windows, Vanloo's Hunt Breakfast and Parrocel's Halt of the King's Grenadiers (both Musée du Louvre, Paris) were set into paneling with shaped openings. Two paintings by de Troy, the Luncheon near a Farm (Louvre) and the Death of a Stag (present location unknown) presumably faced one another from the end walls (see Sahut 1977).

This small painting is undocumented, but is universally accepted as an autograph sketch for Vanloo's Hunt Breakfast. Similar oil sketches by de Troy are in the Wallace Collection, London; an oil sketch for Parrocel's canvas was recorded in 1748. As Eric Zafran (1983) observed, no two figures are the same in Vanloo's sketch and finished painting, although the general idea for the composition remains the same. The finished picture has been cut down at the top by perhaps as much as a foot, and it no longer has the curved contours at the top and bottom that are indicated in the sketch.

On December 4, 1737, Vanloo received 3,000 livres for the large painting, and, the following day, another 1,000 for alterations he made (see Sahut 1977). It is not known what the changes were. Perhaps they were adjustments to make the picture balance Parrocel's asymmetrical composition, which portrays the commander de Creil with some of his soldiers before Philisbourg.

The Subject: Vanloo's depiction of young people enjoying a meal in the open air evokes the world of Watteau's fêtes galantes, especially his Halt during the Hunt of about 1720 (Wallace Collection). As in the tableaux de mode (paintings of fashionable society) of his contemporary, Jean-François de Troy, (see 2019.141.21 and 2019.141.22), Vanloo represents details of fashionable contemporary life including a heavily exoticized Black—likely enslaved—servant who pours wine. (A comparable figure painted by Pierre Louis Dumesnil the Younger appears in 1976.100.8.) Such figures traditionally populated depictions of biblical banquets, such as the marriage feast at Cana. The hunting party was, however, a new subject. One of the earliest examples of this novel genre is François Lemoyne's Hunting Party of 1723 (known in two versions: Alte Pinakothek, Munich, and Museu de Arte de São Paulo). Pictures of hunt meals enjoyed a vogue in the 1720s and 1730s, then disappeared shortly thereafter.

[2019, adapted from Fahy 2005]

sale, Basan, Maison des Ecuries de Mme la Princesse de Lamballe, Paris, May 8, 1783, no. 74, as "Une Halte de Chasseurs, composé de plus de vingt figures, tant debout qu'assises, dans un fond de paysage, Sujet en hauteur, sur toile, par C. Vanloo"; ?[Wildenstein, Paris, in 1909]; David David-Weill, Paris (by 1926–41; sold to Wildenstein); [Wildenstein, New York, 1941–43; sold to Brewster]; Robert Dows Brewster, New York (1943–d. 1995; posthumous sale, Sotheby's, New York, May 19, 1995, no. 113, for $244,500 to Colnaghi); [Colnaghi, New York, 1995; sold to The Met]

Atlanta. High Museum of Art. "The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century," October 5–December 31, 1983, no. 46.

THIS WORK MAY NOT BE LENT, BY TERMS OF ITS ACQUISITION BY THE METROPOLITAN MUSEUM OF ART.

Gabriel Henriot. Collection David Weill. Vol. 1, Peintures. Paris, 1926, pp. 371–73, ill., identifies it as a sketch for the decoration commissioned for the dining room of the petits appartements du roi at Fontainebleau and later transferred to the Louvre, Paris; notes that Charles Parrocel's "Halte de Grenadiers à cheval de la Maison du Roi" (also Louvre) was also exhibited at the Salon of 1737.

Louis Réau. "Carle Vanloo (1705–1765) [in issue titled: Carle Vanloo, Jean Restout: Les lithographies de paysages en France à l'époque romantique]." Archives de l'art français 19 (1938), p. 68, under no. 122.

Marie-Catherine Sahut. Carle Vanloo, premier peintre du roi. Exh. cat., Musée Chéret. Nice, 1977, p. 42, no. 50, ill.

Eric M. Zafran. The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century. Exh. cat., High Museum of Art. Atlanta, 1983, pp. 9, 113, no. 46, ill. p. 101 (color), notes that no pose in the sketch is identical with that found in the finished painting.

Jean-Luc Bordeaux in The Rococo Age: French Masterpieces of the Eighteenth Century. Exh. cat., High Museum of Art. Atlanta, 1983, p. 15.

Joseph Baillio. "French Rococo Painting: A Notable Exhibition in Atlanta." Apollo 119 (January 1984), pp. 20–21, fig. 9.

Katharine Baetjer in "Recent Acquisitions, A Selection: 1995–1996." Metropolitan Museum of Art Bulletin 54 (Fall 1996), p. 35, ill. (color).

Everett Fahy in The Wrightsman Pictures. Ed. Everett Fahy. New York, 2005, pp. 172–75, no. 49, ill. (color).

Neil Jeffares. Minutiae at the Met. March 29, 2019, unpaginated [https://neiljeffares.wordpress.com/2019/03/29/minutiae-at-the-met/].

Katharine Baetjer. French Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art from the Early Eighteenth Century through the Revolution. New York, 2019, pp. 178–82, no. 51, ill. (color).

Colin B. Bailey. "Review of Baetjer 2019." Burlington Magazine 163 (May 2021), p. 470.

This work may not be lent, by terms of its acquisition by The Metropolitan Museum of Art.