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A superb and very beautiful Louis XVI gilt bronze mantle clock of eight day duration by Antoine Crosnier, signed on the white enamel dial Cronier à Paris, the dial with Roman and Arabic numerals and a fine pair of pierced 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 case with circular stiff-leaf gilt bezel in a reeded drum on a fluted pilaster surrounded by clouds and flanked to the left by a beautiful classical female as the personification of lyric poetry with a cockerel by her feet, holding a map of France above the drum and pointing her finger as she leans toward a winged Cupid who stands to the right, on a bow-fronted rectangular base with pierced red fabric-backed foliate panels hung with laurel swags, on fluted feet
Paris, date circa 1765
Height 50 cm.
Provenance: Wildenstein Collection, acquired in London 24th October 1947.
The movement for this fine clock was the work of Antoine Crosnier (b. 1732 d. after 1806), who nearly always signed his dials Cronier or Cronier à Paris. Born in Paris on 13th January 1732, he was the son of Françoise née Boulard and Charles Crosnier, a maître-menuisier. In 1745 Antoine Crosnier began an apprenticeship under Nicolas Pierre Thuillier and by 1753 was working independently of a guild, i.e. ouvrier libre but was received as a Parisian maître-horloger in 1763. Crosnier enjoyed considerable patronage from leading members of society such as the maréchal de Choiseul-Stainville, the marquis de Sainte-Amaranthe, prince Belosselsky-Belozerky, the duc des Deux-Ponts and M. Sollier. Among the many prestigious collections housing examples from his oeuvre are the Musée Nissim-de-Camondo in Paris, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, the Residenzmuseum in Munich and the Residenz Bamberg. Other collections include the Palazzo Reale in Turin, the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire Brussels, the Nationalmuseet Stockholm, the Fine Arts Museum Boston, the Huntington Collection at San Marino, California, Dalmeny House in South Queensferry and Pavlovsk Palace Saint-Petersburg.
From 1759 Crosnier was established at rue Saint-Honoré, Paris, where he began to produce considerable numbers of fine clocks using cases by some of the leading bronziers including Robert and Jean-Baptiste Osmond as well as Edmé Roy, René François Morlay, Nicolas Bonnet and François Vion. He also used cases made by the ébénistes Jean-Pierre Latz and François Goyer. In addition Crosnier employed the gilder Honoré Noël and supplied the tapissier Nicolas Leclerc.
The present case shows Venus as the figure of Euterpe, muse of lyric poetry guiding Cupid. The map of France is displayed on a laurelled altar, while its mosaic-fretted trellis recalls the dome of Rome’s Temple of Venus. The case conforms to similar models of the same period. Among them is a clock with dial signed Filon à Paris and case by the bronzier René-François Morlay; showing the muse Clio to the left with a cockerel at her feet holding an opened scroll while Cupid crouches to the right, with both figures and clock drum set upon a similarly styled base (illustrated in Pierre Kjellberg, “Encyclopédie de la Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XXe Siècle”, 1997, p. 244, pl. A). Another comparable example is a gilt bronze and white marble clock with movement by Jean-Baptiste Lepaute Horloger du Roi and case by François Vion known as La Douleur, or La Pleureuse in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris (illustrated in Jean-Dominique Augarde, in “Les Ouvriers du Temps”, 1996, p. 243, pl. 191). Other models of a similar composition include one known as L’Art d’Aimer with movement by Joseph Revel in the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers, (illustrated in Tardy, “Les Plus Belles Pendules Françaises”, 1994, p. 33). Crosnier also provided the movement for a similarly patriotic case featuring a Cupid holding a medallion of Henri IV (illustrated Kjellberg, op. cit. p. 270, pl. B).
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