Watteau’s Rendez-vous de chasse illustrates a common activity among hunters, especially aristocrats who stopped about midday for a luncheon. The pause was called a tryst (a meeting at a predetermined location), where their wives or mistresses met the hunters. Dining was relatively informal, though it was served by staff. Watteau strictly observes the French usage of pique-nique, meaning to share dining costs and food indoors.
What is served is unimportant to Watteau. It’s the socializing that matters. A century later, Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, a passionate hunter, described a traditional halte de chasse or midday tryst for luncheon as a most festive meal. He wrote that it is an émanation du ciel (emanation of heaven) that gives the meal une vivacité inconnue dans les enclos (closed rooms), however well-decorated.
*Sophia Coppola alludes to Watteau’s Rendez-vous in the film Marie Antoinette (2006).
Featured Image: Rendez-vous de chasse. The Wallace Collection, London
See Jean-Antoine Watteau. Rendez-vous de chasse, aka The Halt during the Chase (1717-1718), oil on canvas. The Wallace Collection, London
http://wallacelive.wallacecollection.org/eMuseumPlus?service=ExternalInterface&module=collection&objectId=65350; Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin’s The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Paris: Chez A. Sautelet et Cie, 1826; The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Edited and Translated by Fayette Robinson. Philadelphia: Lindsay and Blakiston, 1854; The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy. Edited and Translated by M.F.K. Fisher. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1978; The Physiology of Taste, or Meditations on Transcendental Gastronomy (1825). Edited and Translated by Anne Drayton. New York: Penguin, 1978