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LOUIS XVI OBELISK CLOCK

SIGNED BY LOUIS MANGEANT, CIRCA 1775

Details
LOUIS XVI OBELISK CLOCK
SIGNED BY LOUIS MANGEANT, CIRCA 1775
In chased and gilded bronze, the white enamelled dial showing the hours and minutes signed ‘Mangeant / A Paris’, the hands applied with Rhinestones, in a terminal surmounted by an armillary sphere, decorated with garlands of laurels and knotted ribbons, the rectangular base surrounded by a frieze of laurels and rosettes, on flattened feet, the movement signed ‘Mangeant AParis’.
H. 59.5 cm (23 ¹/₂ in.); W. 28 cm (11 in.); D. 16 cm (6 ¹/₂ in.)
Louis Mangeant, master in 1734.
Provenance
Almost certainly formerly in the collection of Jacques-Laure Le Tonnelier (1723-1785), bailli de Breteuil, its sale Paris, 16 January 1786, lot 261.
Literature
Comparative bibliography:
Tardy, La Pendule française dans le monde, 2e partie, Paris, 1987, p. 61.
P. Kjellberg, Encyclopédie de la pendule française, Paris, 1997, p. 222.
E. Niehüser, French bronze clocks, Atglen, 1999, p. 249, ref. 1075.

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Lot Essay

Straight out of the neo-Greek vocabulary, the first phase of neo-classicism in France, this obelisk clock bears the signature of the clockmaker Louis Mangeant, master in 1734, who worked in rue du Portour in Saint Gervais until 1778.

Our clock is most certainly the one described in the after-death inventory of the Bailli de Breteuil, drawn up on 31 August 1785: Une pendule du nom de Mangeant à Paris a cadran d'email doubles (sic) aiguille et demi-hours de marcassite.
It later appeared in the catalogue of his sale in January 1786: Bronze doré d'or moulu. 261 A striking clock by Mangeant in Paris: it consists of a four-sided obelisk surmounted by a sphere, set on its base with rosette and four balls, raised on a moulded base enriched with a lion skin with white marble plinth supported by four lion claws. Height 28 inches, width 15 inches.

This clock was probably mounted on a high marble base with lion's claw feet and gilded bronze sconces, which may explain the difference in height between the Bailli de Breteuil clock and the present example (approximately 15 cm).
An almost identical model signed Charles Le Roy is now in the collections of the Musée des Arts Décoratifs in Paris (Inv. 16435), as is another signed Castagnet, illustrated in P. Kjellberg, Encyclopédie de la pendule française, p. 222.