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A very fine small sized Louis XVI gilt bronze mantle clock of eight day duration, signed on the white enamel dial Charles Le Roy à Paris, the dial with Roman and Arabic numerals and a fine pair of pierced gilt brass minute and hour hand with fleur-de-lis pointer. The movement with anchor escapement, silk thread suspension, striking on the hour and half hour, with outside count wheel. The fine case of a waisted outline surmounted by a domed top with a pinecone finial above a smaller berried finial and laurel leaf swags and scrolls flanking the circular dial bezel, above a guilloche cast base flanked by acanthus scrolls, on turned feet
Paris, date circa 1765-70
Height 36 cm, width 21 cm, depth 10.5 cm.
One of the charms of this clock is its compact size in addition to the fact that the movement was made by the eminent Parisian firm of Charles Le Roy. Referred to in glowing terms in the principal almanacs of the second half of the eighteenth century, the business was run firstly by Charles Le Roy (1709-71) who became a maître in 1733, then in conjunction with his equally brilliant son Etienne-Augustin (b. Paris 1737 d. after 1792) and finally by Etienne-Augustin alone. Charles Le Roy was firstly established at rue des Prêcheurs and then sometime before 1745 moved to rue Saint-Denis. Etienne-Augustin was received as a maître-horloger in 1758 and was subsequently appointed Horloger du Roi to King Louis XVI. After his father’s death he remained at rue Saint-Denis and continued to sign his dials ‘Charles Le Roy’. In 1792/95 he sold the concern to Gaspard Cachard, who in acknowledgement styled himself as ‘Cachard, Succr, de Ch. Le Roy’.
In its earliest days the Le Roy workshop specialised in manufacture of watches but after about 1760 clock production dramatically increased. The firm’s clock cases were made by the leading makers of the day. The Caffiéris, Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain, the Osmonds, François Vion, François Rémond, Cottin, Etienne Martincourt, Zaccon, Frémont, Le Mire and E. Blavet supplied those in bronze, while veneered cases were made by such ébénistes as Balthazar Lieutaud, Antoine Foullet, Pécourt, François Duhamel and François Goyer. Elie Barbezat, who also supplied Imbert l’Aîné, Julien Le Roy and Robert Robin, made a number of the firm’s dials. An inventory of Louis XVI’s clocks made in 1788 recorded nine by Charles Le Roy, all in the king’s private apartments at Versailles. A list of clocks belonging to the Menus Plaisirs, 1793, mentioned a tenth clock (which is now accepted as the one in the J. Paul Getty Museum, California).
In addition to Louis XVI, the firm’s clientele included the comte de Provence, Mademoiselle de Clermont and the courts of Sweden and Saxony. Today one can find works by Charles Le Roy in notable collections including the Mathematisch-Physikalischer Salon, Dresden, the Nordiske Museum, Stockholm and in the Feill and Ilbert collections. Further examples are housed in the Musées du Louvre, Cognac-Jay and Jacquemart-André in Paris, the Historisches Museum Basel, the Walters Art Gallery Baltimore, the J. P. Getty Museum, California and the Metropolitan Museum, New York.
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