| |
A rare Louis XV gilt bronze mantle clock of eight day duration signed on the white enamel dial Gille l’Aîné à Paris and stamped on the ebonised wooden base I C SAUNIER, the dial with Roman and Arabic numerals and a fine pair of gilt brass hands for the hours and minutes. The movement with anchor escapement, silk thread suspension, striking on the hour and half-hour with outside count wheel. The wonderful and very unusual case formed as a seated classical female supporting on her knee the dial drum with ribbon-tied laurel wreath bezel surround, holding in her left hand a coin that she adds to others in a purse, the whole on a rectangular stepped ebonised base with gilt egg-and-dart band
Paris, date circa 1760
Height 43 cm, width 58.5 cm, depth 18 cm.
The combination of the clockmaker Pierre I François Gille, known as Gille l’Aîné (b. circa 1690 d. 1765), the ébéniste Jean-Charles Saunier (maître 1743) and the rarity of the bronze case make this a very special piece. Pierre I François Gille was born in Dieppe and in 1746 was received as a Paris maître-horloger by virtue of his residence in the Hôpital de la Trinité. Established at rue Saint-Martin, he produced a number of luxurious clocks for his wealthy patrons, especially Augustus II of Saxony, as well as the comte von Brülh and the prince de Condé. Many of his clocks were housed in cases decorated with porcelain figures and flowers, such as one now in the Rothschild Collection, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire. Gille was also supplied by Saunier as well the ébénistes Jean-Pierre Latz, Nicolas-Jean Marchand, Antoine Foullet, Antoine Gosselin and the fondeurs Robert and Jean-Baptiste Osmond and Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain. In addition to his clock at Waddesdon his work can be admired at Château de Versailles, the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Rouen and the Museum für Kunsthandwerk in Dresden. His son, Pierre II Gille, (1723-84), who was received as a maître in 1746 worked firstly with his father but by 1751 had moved to rue Saint-Denis where he ran an independent workshop under the name of ‘Gille l’Aîné Fils’. But after his father’s death in 1765 Pierre II Gille adopted the name Gille l’Aîné for himself.
The clock base is relatively unusual in that it bares a maker’s stamp, namely that of Jean-Charles Saunier (maître 1743). Saunier belonged to an important family of Parisian ébénistes that included his father Charles (maître before 1737), his brother Jean-Baptiste (maître 1757) and his celebrated son Claude-Charles Saunier (1735-1807). Jean-Charles Saunier worked from his father’s workshop in rue du Faubourg Saint-Antoine, where he was later assisted by his own son Claude-Charles and eventually handed the family business to the latter circa 1765. Jean-Charles supplied work to the tapissiers as well as the celebrated ébéniste Jean-François Oeben. In addition to small-scale work he also made commodes, bureaux and small tables in the classic Louis XV style.
The subject of the case appears to represent vanity, relating to the term Vanitas (literally meaning emptiness) associated with the emptiness or transience of earthly possessions. The subject thus includes a female beauty as well as gold coins and purse but could also have featured jewels, a crown or sceptre (and in still-life paintings fruit), which are all of transient value and will ultimately be destroyed by death. For this reason many Vanitas still-lifes also include a scull or figure of Death. The personification of vanity, in the sense of vainness or conceit, was portrayed in Renaissance paintings as well as Louis XVI and Empire clock cases as a female beauty seated or reclining on a couch attending to her hair with a comb or mirror, which was sometimes held by a putto.
|
|
/images/left.gif){kind=small}
