The Ham Dinner

Nicolas Lancret's The Ham Dinner of 1735 depicts an outdoor feast in a garden setting with elegant company enjoying food and wine — a genre scene that updates the Dutch merry company tradition with Watteau-influenced elegance. Lancret was Watteau's most successful follower, and his fête galante and genre subjects provided a commercially viable version of Watteau's more melancholic vision. The ham's centerpiece prominence gives the painting a specific material interest within the otherwise conventional garden party setting, the food's robust physicality contrasting with the fashionable refinement of the company.

Lancret renders the outdoor feast with bright, decorative color and lively figure composition. The warm palette and the animated gestures of the diners create a scene of elegant pleasure in the tradition of Watteau's garden parties.