Rare Gilt Bronze and Blue-Lacquered Metal Cercles Tournants Mantel Clock representing “The Allegory of Dawn”
Plate of the movement signed and dated “Lepaute Hger du Roi à Paris 1780”
by Jean-André (1720-1789) and Jean-Baptiste Lepaute (1727-1802)
Case attributed to bronzier Robert Osmond (1711 – 1789)
Paris, beginning of the Louis XVI period, dated 1780
Inscription on the bronze base: “LEPAUTE”
The cercles tournants with enameled cartouches, which indicate the Roman numeral hours, with the diurnal hours on a white ground and the nocturnal ones on a black ground, and the Arabic five-minute intervals, are fitted onto a terrestrial globe that is engraved with the map of the world. The movement, whose plate is signed and dated “Lepaute Hger du Roi à Paris 1780” (“Hger du Roi” is the abbreviation for Horloger du Roi, French for Clockmaker of the King), is housed in a finely chased case made of matte gilt bronze and blue-lacquered metal. The globe, which is placed among clouds, is adorned with a star-studded drapery that has been lowered by an angel holding a flaming torch, which is an allegory of the Day or the Dawn. These elements stand on a truncated column with rudented fluting; its base is adorned with a torus featuring an interlace pattern centered by rosettes and adorned with ribbon-tied reeds. It is placed on an octagonal base with matted reserves centered by applied rosettes. Under the door that gives access to the movement the bronze base bears the signature “LEPAUTE”.
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The exceptional quality of its chasing and gilding is proof that the clock was made in one of the finest Parisian workshops of the final third of the 18th century. Our attribution to the bronze-caster Robert Osmond in particular is in part due to his inclinations to create clocks shaped as truncated columns, as well as his numerous collaborations with the clockmakers Lepaute throughout the years.
The remarkable design of the present clock with its cercles tournants fitted within a globe, was inspired by the theme of the Dawn or the Day and Night, which was rarely seen in the luxury Parisian horological creations of the final decades of the 18th century. We know of only two comparable models. The first, formerly in the Léopold Double collection, features a putto seated on a globe, who points to the time with his arrow (illustrated in Tardy, La pendule française dans le Monde, Paris, 1994, p. 89). The second, which has a movement by the clockmaker Roque, presents a design very similar to that of the present clock, though it also includes a garland of leaves and a figure representing an allegory of the Night. It is in the Decorative Arts Museum in Lyon (see J-D. Augarde, Les ouvriers du Temps, La pendule à Paris de Louis XIV à Napoléon Ier, Editions Antiquorum, Genève, 1996, p. 26, fig. 12; see also P. Arizzoli-Clémentel and C. Cardinal, Ô Temps ! Suspends ton vol, Catalogue des pendules et horloges du Musée des Arts décoratifs de Lyon, Lyon, 2008, p.77, catalogue n°39).
Jean-André and Jean-Baptiste Lepaute
“Lepaute Horloger du Roi à Paris“: This is the signature of the brothers Jean-André Lepaute (1720-1789) and Jean-Baptiste Lepaute (1727-1802), remarkable clockmakers born in Thonne-la-Long in Lorraine who were both horlogers du Roi (Clockmakers of the King).
Jean-André came to Paris as a young man and was joined by his brother in 1747. The Lepaute enterprise, founded informally in 1750, was formally incorporated in 1758. Jean-André, who was received as a maître by the corporation des horlogers in 1759, was lodged first in the Palais du Luxembourg and then, in 1756, in the Galeries du Louvre. Jean-André Lepaute wrote a horological treatise (Traité d’Horlogerie), published in Paris in 1755. Another volume, entitled Description de plusieurs ouvrages d’horlogerie (A Description of several horological pieces) appeared in 1764. In 1748 he married the mathematician and astronomer Nicole-Reine Etable de la Brière, who among other things predicted the return of Halley’s Comet.
Jean-Baptiste Lepaute, received maître in December 1776, was known for the equation of time clock he constructed for the Paris Hôtel de Ville (1780, destroyed in the fire of 1871) and the clock of the Hôtel des Invalides.
The two brothers worked for the French Garde-Meuble de la Couronne; their clocks were appreciated by the most important connoisseurs of the time, both in France and abroad, such as the Prince Charles de Lorraine and the Queen Louise-Ulrika of Sweden.
Jean-Baptiste took over the workshop when Jean-André retired in 1775.
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Robert Osmond (1711 - 1789)
French bronze-caster Robert Osmond was born in Canisy, near Saint-Lô; he began his apprenticeship in the workshop of Louis Regnard, maître fondeur en terre et en sable, and became a master bronzier in Paris in 1746. He is recorded as working in the rue des Canettes in the St. Sulpice parish, moving to the rue de Mâcon in 1761. Robert Osmond became a juré, thus gaining a certain degree of protection of his creative rights. In 1753, he sent for his nephew in Normandy, and in 1761, the workshop, which by that time had grown considerably, moved to the rue de Macon. The nephew, Jean-Baptiste Osmond (1742-after 1790) became a master in 1764 and as of that date worked closely with his uncle, to such a degree that it is difficult to differentiate between the contributions of each. Robert appears to have retired around 1775. Jean-Baptiste, who remained in charge of the workshop after the retirement of his uncle, encountered difficulties and went bankrupt in 1784. Robert Osmond died in 1789.
Prolific bronze casters and chasers, the Osmonds worked with equal success in both the Louis XV and the Neo-classical styles. Prized by connoisseurs of the period, their work was distributed by clockmakers and marchands-merciers. Although they made all types of furnishing objects, including fire dogs, wall lights and inkstands, the only extant works by them are clocks, including one depicting the Rape of Europe (Getty Museum, California) in the Louis XV style and two important Neo-classical forms, of which there are several examples, as well as a vase with lions’ heads (Musée Condé, Chantilly and the Cleveland Museum of Art) and a cartel-clock with chased ribbons (examples in the Stockholm Nationalmuseum; Paris, Nissim de Camondo Museum). A remarkable clock decorated with a globe, cupids and a Sèvres porcelain plaque (Paris, Louvre) is another of their notable works.
Specialising at first in the rocaille style, in the early 1760’s they turned to the new Neo-classical style and soon numbered among its greatest practitioners. They furnished cases to the best clockmakers of the period, such as Montjoye, for whom they made cases for cartonnier and column clocks, the column being one of the favourite motifs of the Osmond workshop.