THE PROPERTY OF A LADY
A LOUIS XVI ORMOLU-MOUNTED BRONZE AND WHITE MARBLE MANTEL CLOCK with circular Roman-chaptered enamel dial with pierced scroll hands and signed STOLLEWERCK A. PARIS, the similarly-signed five pillar going-barrel movement with outside countwheel strike-on-bell and silk suspension, with pierced foliate hinged backplate and in a drum-shaped case supporting a reclining figure of Clio reading seated on a stool, on rectangular base

Details
A LOUIS XVI ORMOLU-MOUNTED BRONZE AND WHITE MARBLE MANTEL CLOCK with circular Roman-chaptered enamel dial with pierced scroll hands and signed STOLLEWERCK A. PARIS, the similarly-signed five pillar going-barrel movement with outside countwheel strike-on-bell and silk suspension, with pierced foliate hinged backplate and in a drum-shaped case supporting a reclining figure of Clio reading seated on a stool, on rectangular base
24¾in. (62.5cm.) wide; 14½in. (37cm.) high
Provenance

Lot Essay

Michel Stollewercke (sic), maître in 1746, recorded in the Rue Dauphine as late as 1775

This model is a variant on what is thought to be one of the earliest neo-classical clock designs of all. In 1758 the marchand-mercier Lazare Duvaux (d.1759), sold to Louis XV for the duc de Bourgogne's apartment 'Une pendule à sonnerie de J. le Roy, composée d'une figure coucheé représentant l'Etude en bronze doré d'or moulu, 1,100l' (Lazare Duvaux, Minutier Central, No. 3240). Horace Walpole is known later to have owned a Leroy example at Strawberry Hill. It is visible on a black lacquer bureau in a watercolour of the Great Parlour in 1788 (illustrated in C. Wainwright, The Romantic Interior, Yale, 1989, p.82, pl.60). Walpole's clock is possibly the one now in the James A. Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor (see: G. de Bellaigue, Furniture, Clocks and Bronzes, Office du Livre, 1974, vol. I, pp.104-7, no.17).

More from Continental Furniture

View All
View All