Fête champêtre

This form of entertainment was particularly practised by the French court, where in the Gardens of Versailles and elsewhere areas of the park were landscaped with follies, pavilions, and temples to accommodate such festivities.

The term is a French expression, very literally translating as "party in the fields", meaning a "pastoral festival" or "country feast" and in theory was a simple form of entertainment, perhaps little more than a picnic or informal open air dancing.

Such events became a popular subject in French 18th-century painting, representing a glamourized aristocratic form of pastoral, with "scenes of well dressed dalliance in a park setting".

In 1717 the French Academy expanded its categories of painting to include what it termed the fête galante especially for Watteau's reception piece The Embarkation for Cythera, now in the Louvre.

The genre in painting "died a quiet death" in the early 1740s,[3] though arguably living on in the form of porcelain figure groups for the rest of the century.