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Lot Essay
Prolific bronze casters and chasers, Robert and Jean-Baptiste Osmond worked with equal success in both the Louis XV and Neo-classical styles. The present clock, made in the 1780s, is a variation of a very successful model based on a drawing today in the Institut National d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris (see H. Ottomeyer/P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol.I, p.229). This design, of a similar clock, with scrolls instead of putti, inspired the creation of a number of pendules in the 1770-80s of which the present is, perhaps, the final and most elaborate version. It seems that this model was originally conceived to sit on cartonniers or secrétaire à abattant as illustrated by the secrétaire by Joseph Baumhauer now in the Musée Jacquemard-André (illustrated in P. Verlet, Les bronzes dorés du XVIIIe siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 117, fig. 148).
Interestingly, an identical clock with a movement by Charles Le Roy is listed in the Cabinet de la Pendule of Louis XVI at Versailles. A further related clock by Osmond, with the putti surmounting rather than flanking the dial, was supplied by the marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier in 1777 to Louis XVI's younger brother, the comte d'Artois, for the Salon des Jeux in his apartments at the Palais du Temple, Paris (see D. Alcouffe, La Folie d'Artois, Paris, 1988, p.108, fig.18).
Interestingly, an identical clock with a movement by Charles Le Roy is listed in the Cabinet de la Pendule of Louis XVI at Versailles. A further related clock by Osmond, with the putti surmounting rather than flanking the dial, was supplied by the marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier in 1777 to Louis XVI's younger brother, the comte d'Artois, for the Salon des Jeux in his apartments at the Palais du Temple, Paris (see D. Alcouffe, La Folie d'Artois, Paris, 1988, p.108, fig.18).