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Lot Essay
The figurative clock is designed in the Louis Seize gôut Grec fashion and celebrates the triumph of Virtue and the Arts. A youthful genius assists a matron, personifying the Liberal Art of Geometry, to record earths measurements beside a sacred urn-capped and myrtle-wreathed clock, whose stepped and laurel-festooned altar pedestal displays the head of the Arcadian styr Pan emerging from a cartouche of Roman acanthus. Its composition relates to the designs of the Faubourg St- Denis bronzier Jean-Louis Prieur (mâitre 1769), who was styled sculpteur, ciseleur et doreur du Roy and whose engraved Oeuvres were issued in 1783 (H. Ottomeyer, P.Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol.1, p.254, fig 4.7.1).
This goût grec clock reflects the influence of Louis-Felix de la Rue (1731-17650. A pupil of Lambert-Sigismund Adam, de la Rue became a pensionnaire of the French Academy in Rome in 1754, although he was forced to curtail his stay owing to ill-health. It was his marble of L'etude, sold in Lalive de Jully's sale, which provided the inspiration for the group of related clocks executed by the bronzier Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain (H. Ottomyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol.1, p.161).
This goût grec clock reflects the influence of Louis-Felix de la Rue (1731-17650. A pupil of Lambert-Sigismund Adam, de la Rue became a pensionnaire of the French Academy in Rome in 1754, although he was forced to curtail his stay owing to ill-health. It was his marble of L'etude, sold in Lalive de Jully's sale, which provided the inspiration for the group of related clocks executed by the bronzier Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain (H. Ottomyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol.1, p.161).