Eighteenth-Century French Clocks

Although by the eighteenth century mechanisms had become both reliable and accurate, clocks continued to function as important status symbols indicating their owners’ wealth and refinement. This set is made with three vases in the rare Chinese porcelain known as celadon bleu fleuri. Soon after they reached France, the vases were embellished with gilt-bronze mounts and a movement by Jean Martin in an attempt to satisfy French collectors’ perpetual quest for increasingly more elaborate and novel luxury items.

The mounts reflect the latest style, the goût grec (Greek taste), which developed in the 1760s and 1770s as a reaction to the rococo style favored by Louis XV and his court. Here the beautifully chased mounts include crowns of laurel, acanthus leaves, pilasters, lion masks, and other motifs inspired by classical Greek and Roman architecture. A gilded snake indicates the time.

Although the pendulum clock was invented in 1653 by the Dutch mathematician Christiaan Huygens (1629–1695), its development took place in England and France. This scientific revolution transformed clocks into precise timekeepers that were both decorative and functional. Around 1669 a special type of escapement was invented that enabled pendulum clocks to keep time within a few seconds. While the British designed the case around the movement, the French gave increasing importance to the case. The French eighteenth-century clocks featured in this exhibition are all pendulum clocks, including this example with figures in bronze representing Study and Philosophy after a sculpture by Simon-Louis Boizot. The movement is by the renowned clockmaker Renacle-Nicolas Sotiau, who supplied timepieces to Louis XVI, Marie-Antoinette, and the daughters of Louis XV, among others.

This imposing clock exemplifies the role played by sculpture in the design of clock cases in late eighteenth-century France. Two caryatids in black bronze, draped in antique style, were modeled by an unknown sculptor who studied classical architecture. They support the upper part of a Greek temple, in the manner of the Erechtheion in Athens, built between 421 and 406 bc. Here the temple, interrupted by the clock dial, is chased and gilded by a talented craftsman, possibly François Rémond, who also executed the fabric that links the element of architecture with the caryatids’ heads, the mask of Apollo at the bottom of the pendulum, and the decoration at the base.