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Lot Essay
This remarkable clock garniture is exemplary of the perfection of manufacture achieved at the end of the 19th century in the arts of horlogerie and marqueterie. Reviving the ‘Boulle’ style synonymous with André-Charles Boulle (1642-1732), the maker Lesage has sought to outdo the great master. The reclining sphinx and the figure of the Titan Chronos as ‘Father Time’ wielding a scythe, are attributes familiar to Boulle’s oeuvre, but especially in the monumental figure of Chronos unveiling a star studied orb, this clock shows a very 19th century extravagance and ambition.
The firm of Lesage is recorded as early as 1812 and noted to have had ‘the most beautiful models for the reconstruction of ancient bronze clocks’ (Tardy, Dictionnaire des Horlogers Français, Paris, 1971, p. 410). By 1898 Monsieur Lesage is recorded as an ébéniste and marqueteer at 70, Rue Amelot, Paris, for the ‘répartation de pendules anciennes et meubles’. Francois Lesage Fils is recorded to have ‘composée et exécuté’ the present clock in 1899 for Monsieur le Baron Lassus, ‘expédiée au château de Valmirande’, with the candelabra following in 1901.
Bertrand, baron de Lassus (1868-1909) inherited an immense fortune from his mother, of the the Pillet-Will family of bankers. He was an eminently romantic character, an amateur mountaineer and gentleman explorer, who devoted some of his considerable fortune to setting up base camps for leisurely climbs with friends in the Pyrenees. In 1892 at the age of only 24, Bertrand de Lassus began the construction of the extravagant château de Valmirande near Montréjean in the Haute-Garonne region. A ‘palais quasi-royal’, inspired by the castles of the Loire valley, and designed in the neo-Renaissance style by the architect Louis Garros, the immense château de Valmirande is set in some forty hectares of parkland arranged by Bülher frères.
The firm of Lesage is recorded as early as 1812 and noted to have had ‘the most beautiful models for the reconstruction of ancient bronze clocks’ (Tardy, Dictionnaire des Horlogers Français, Paris, 1971, p. 410). By 1898 Monsieur Lesage is recorded as an ébéniste and marqueteer at 70, Rue Amelot, Paris, for the ‘répartation de pendules anciennes et meubles’. Francois Lesage Fils is recorded to have ‘composée et exécuté’ the present clock in 1899 for Monsieur le Baron Lassus, ‘expédiée au château de Valmirande’, with the candelabra following in 1901.
Bertrand, baron de Lassus (1868-1909) inherited an immense fortune from his mother, of the the Pillet-Will family of bankers. He was an eminently romantic character, an amateur mountaineer and gentleman explorer, who devoted some of his considerable fortune to setting up base camps for leisurely climbs with friends in the Pyrenees. In 1892 at the age of only 24, Bertrand de Lassus began the construction of the extravagant château de Valmirande near Montréjean in the Haute-Garonne region. A ‘palais quasi-royal’, inspired by the castles of the Loire valley, and designed in the neo-Renaissance style by the architect Louis Garros, the immense château de Valmirande is set in some forty hectares of parkland arranged by Bülher frères.