THE MOUNTS CAST BY AUGUSTE DELAFONTAINE, THIRD QUARTER 19TH CENTURY

This clock is a direct copy of a Louis XIV period clock and bracket, attributed to the workshop of André-Charles Boulle, with movement by Antoine Gaudron, which is now in the Louvre, having been gifted in 1985 by Jean-Paul and Michel Fabre (OA 11029). In the 1732 inventory of André-Charles Boulle's atelier, a clock of this model is listed as 'une boeste contenant les modeles de la pendule a Parques avec le Temps isolé', clearly indicating a clock depicting the three Fates with Time 'isolated', watching the three sisters from above as Clotho divides the thread of life, Lachesis measures it, and Atropos cuts it. The model derives from a design by Boulle which published by Mariette in Nouveaux desseins de meubles et ouvrages de bronze et de marqueterie inventés et gravés par André-Charles Boulle, circa 1715. The three Fates model occurs elsewhere in Boulle's oeuvre, and was (likely re-)used for the fall-front of a filing-cabinet, which is in the Wallace Collection, surmounted by a different 'Fates' clock model by Boulle, the figures likely sculpted by Nicolas Coustau (Inv. F413; P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection. Catalogue of Furniture. II, London, 1996, pp. 696-706); as well as on a similar filing-cabinet and clock in the collections of the Dukes of Marlborough at Blenheim Palace (D. Green, Blenheim Palace, Woodstock, 1950, reprinted 1978, p. 32).

The Delafontaine bronze factory was first established in the late 18th century by Jean-Baptiste-Maximilien Delafontaine (1750-1820), and was subsequently under the direction of Jean-Baptiste's grandson, Auguste-Maximilien, under whose tenure the present clock was most likely produced. In 1870, located at 10 rue de L'Université, the firm created decorative works of art of the highest quality and was a main competitor to the Barbedienne foundry, which had been established by the Parisian bronzier Ferdinand Barbedienne (1810-1892), in collaboration with Achille Collas, the inventor of the mechanical method of copying sculptures on a smaller scale. The Delafontaine foundry cast beautiful works of art based on designs by famous 19th-century sculptors, such as Antoine-Louis Bayre, James Praider and Mathurin Moreau. Items created by Delafontaine are now held in major private and public art collections, including the Louvre in Paris.