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).
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).