LAPIERRE, PARIS, EARLY 19TH CENTURY

This 'Pendule au bon Sauvage' is thought to depict Toussaint L'Ouverture (1743-1803), leader of the Haitian Revolution between 1791-1804. Toussaint fought for independence from French colonizers, abolished slavery and secured 'native' control over the colony, Haiti. In 1797 while nominally governor of the colony, he expelled the French commissioner Sonthonax, as well as the British armies, invaded Santo Domingo to free the slaves there and wrote a Constitution naming himself governor-for-life that established a new polity for the colony. Between the years 1800 and 1802, Toussaint Louverture tried to rebuild the collapsed economy of Haiti and re-establish commercial contacts with the United States and Britain. His rule permitted the colony a taste of freedom which, after his death in exile, was gradually destroyed during the successive reigns of a series of despots.

A comparable clock is in the Spanish Royal Collections (J. Ramon Colon De Carvajal, Catalogo de Relojes Del Patrimonio Nacional, Editorial Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 1987, p. 151, No. 129). A further model is illustrated in P. Kjellberg, L'Encyclopédie de La Pendule Française, Paris, 1997, p. 347, plate D.