MID-18TH CENTURY, THE MOVEMENT BY JEAN LENOIR

Clocks incorporating figures of rhinoceri, elephants, bulls and lions were highly fashionable in mid-eighteenth-century Paris. Draftsmen and ornemanistes routinely produced, copied and plagiarized popular subjects in response to changing tastes and current events. In this way models were disseminated to a number of workshops. Mantel clocks with elephant supports were among the most popular during the reign of Louis XV, and many examples exist with the animals modeled in bronze and ormolu, including some signed by Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain with asymmetric rockwork and scrolling base. Such splendid pendules à l'éléphant signed by Saint-Germain include one illustrated in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Vol. 1, Munich, 1986, p. 123, fig. 2.8.3, another in the collection of the Dukes of Buccleuch at Drumlanrig Castle, Scotland, and a further example offered Sotheby's Paris, 24 March 2006, lot 34. The vast majority of Saint Germain’s clocks depict elephants with raised trunks, based on seventeenth-century Japanese porcelain models, such as the Kakiemon elephants listed in 1688 in the collection of John Cecil, 5th Earl of Exeter at Burghley House, Lincolnshire, see J. Ayers, O. Impey, J.V.G. Mallet, Porcelain for Palaces, The Fashion for Japan in Europe, 1650-1750, London, 1990, p. 178, no. 160.

Unlike Saint-Germain’s elephants, the one here is depicted with a lowered trunk, which appears to be a hallmark of pendules à l'éléphant produced in the Caffieri workshop. An elephant clock signed FAIT PAR CAFFIERI is in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, see H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, op. cit., p. 124, fig. 2.8.6; another one signed CAFFIERI FECIT sold Christie’s, 19 December 2007, lot 350; another was illustrated Connaissance des Arts, April 1958, p. 99. All these signed models feature an elephant with lowered trunks, which makes them distinctly different from Saint-Germain’s works. This model had already existed in the workshop of Caffieri père by 1747 as it is described in the inventory of his stock at the time of the association with his son as “Plus les modèles d'une pendule à l'éléphant dont les quatre pieds posés sur une terrasse. Il porte sur son dos, au moyen d'une housse, une bonte de pendule, la coquille de ladite bonte sert de modèle pour le devant et le derrière, sur ladite bonte il s'y met un singe, le tout est de cuivre, or [hormis] l'éléphant qui est de cire.” The same model is found in the inventory drawn up after Caffieri's death in 1755: “N07576, un modèle de pendule à tambour avec son pied surmonté d'un singe, 72 L” as well as a finished clock of this type valued at the considerable sum of 400 livres: “N0145. Une boîte de pendule ' iliphant dori d'or moulu, prisi 400 L.”