A LATE LOUIS XVI MANTEL CLOCK (PENDULE A L'ETUDE)

Late 18th/early 19th c.

Ormolu, bronze and black marble-cased, the circular white enamel dial with Arabic numerals, pierced gilt sunburst hands, in drum case surmounted by an eagle with outspread wings and clutching Jupter's thunderbolts; supported on a concave sided socle fronted by a classical relief of twin griffins flanking a flaming altar of vase form; on D-ended plinth with twin addorsed bronze figures (he writing, she reading), the frieze with central panel of billing doves within foliate scrollwork and a pair of Apollo mask roundels on rectangular panels, all standing on six toupie feet; the movement with countwheel strike and silk-suspended pendulum. NOTE: The two seated figures in bronze on this clock derive from models created for the Sevres porcelain manufactory in 1780 by the sculptor Simon-Louis Boizot (1743-1809). These figures were incorporated into the design for a clock of this model on behalf of Dominique Daguerre (the leading Parisian marchand mercier of the late 18th and early 19th centuries) who commissioned the bronzier Francois Remond to execute it in bronze ca. 1783. In 1788 Daguerre delivered two of these clocks to Louis XVI's order for the chateau de St. Cloud. REFERENCES: Augarde, J. D. Les Ouvriers du Temps, Geneva, 1996, pp. 146-47, fig. 168. Verlet, P. Les Bronzes Dores Francais de XVIIIeme Siecle, Paris, 1987, p. 322.