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RICHARD REDDING ANTIQUES |
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RICHARD REDDING ANTIQUES |
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A very fine and rare Empire gilt and patinated bronze pendule au jeune nègre of eight day duration by Deverberie et Compagnie, signed on the white enamel dial Jnt. F.et Deverberie & C.nie Rue Des Fosses Du Temple, No. 47 à Paris. The dial with Roman and Arabic numerals and a fine pair of gilt brass hands for the hours and minutes. The movement with circular brass plates and spring barrels for both trains, anchor escapement with silk thread suspension, striking on the hour and half hour on a single bell, with outside count wheel. The case composed of the clock drum set upon a tasselled cushion supported on the head and resting in the raised hands of a patinated bronze figure of a young African boy with white enamel eyes wearing a double row of gilt beads around his neck, arm bracelets, a gilt quiver of arrows slung across his back and a gilt tasselled loin cloth, standing on a circular splayed patinated base ornamented with beaded borders and gilt foliate garlands suspended from satyr mask heads, on three lion paw feet Height 45 cm, width 19 cm. Paris, date circa 1815 Literature: Elke Niehüser, “Die Französische Bronzeuhr”, 1997, p. 161, pl. 262, showing an almost identical clock and matching candelabra in the Musée François Duesberg at Mons. Pierre Kjellberg, “Encyclopédie de la Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XXe Siècle”, 1997, p. 348, pl. A, illustrating an almost identical clock by Deverberie et Compagnie but without the quiver and arm bracelets. This superb clock is almost identical to another by Jean-Simon Deverberie (1764-1824) housed in the Musée François Duesberg at Mons. Other near identical examples include one formerly in the Fermor-Hesketh Collection, 1988 and another exhibited in 1991 at the Queen’s Gallery Buckingham Palace, London. The design for this extremely fine clock was created in circa 1799 by Jean-Simon Deverberie who enjoyed great success as a designer, bronze manufacturer as well as a marchand-mercier. His designs for the present work as well as other similar examples are included in the Cabinet des Estampes, Bibliothèque Nationale Paris. By 1800 Deverberie was established at rue Barbette; four years later he was at Boulevard du Temple and from 1812 until 1824 his business Deverberie & Compagnie was based at rue des Fosses, as referred to on the present dial. Deverberie was the most important artists of his time to create a series of bronzes and almost certainly the first to make a clock case celebrating the theme of le bon sauvage. This ideal was itself encouraged by views of equality as proposed by Rousseau and others and culminated in the abolition of slavery by the Convention in 1793. Interest in le bon sauvage continued throughout the Empire period despite Napoleon’s reintroduction in 1802 of slavery and the slave trade. Writers and artists alike were inspired to address the notion of le bon sauvage, as expressed in Daniel Defoe’s ‘Robinson Crusoe’ (1719), Jonathan Swift’s ‘Gulliver’s Travels’ (1724), as well ‘Paul et Virginie’ (1787) by B. de Saint-Pierre and ‘Atala’ (1801) by Vicomte de Chateaubriand. The first Deverberie clock case on this theme was la négress, housing a movement by Furet and Godon, which was presented to Queen Marie-Antoinette in 1784. The present design, dating from about 1799, corresponds in date with a pendule au sauvage by Deverberie known as l’Amèrique, of which there is an example at Musée Duesberg, Mons. The latter features a female figure beside a palm seated upon an alligator above the clock drum. Other celebrated Deverberie models on the same theme include his pendule à l’Afrique, featuring a half-draped huntress seated beside a panther. |