A Parisian ormolu pendulum clock with a lion
Fire gilt bronze, ebony veneer, white enamel dial with large black Latin numerals and small Arabic numerals, pierced gilded hands, domed glass. 14-day running brass movement with a silver plated bronze bell and thread suspension, converted to anchor escapement. Depicting a standing lion with anthropomorphic features, supporting a large cartouche on its back which contains the round pendulum movement. Crowned by an urn hung with a laurel drapery. The oblong plinth of the clock set into a veneered base with accentuated angles resting on four spherical foliate clasped feet. H 59, W 39.5, D 22.5 cm.
Circa 1770 – 80.
The brothers Georges and Edme Caussard were extremely successful watchmakers during the reign of Louis XVI. Georges Caussard was born in 1755 and is documented until 1789, the year of the Revolution. Edme, on the other hand, died in 1780. He was allowed to use the privileged title "horloger privilégié du roi suivant la cour" and always signed as he did on the dial of this pendulum clock.
The bronze model is generally attributed to either Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain or François Vion. However, Roland de L'Espée also mentions that the Caussard brothers were supplied from the Osmond workshop (Ottomeyer/Pröschel, vol. II., p. 540). The clock's finial, an urn motif hung with a laurel wreath, is very typical of the œuvre of Robert and Jean-Baptiste Osmond. In the first volume of his work on bronzes, Hans Ottomeyer published two drawings of pendulum clocks with urn finials, attributed to both François Vion and Robert Osmond and housed in the Bibliothèque Doucet (vol. I, 3.12.5). A clear attribution is therefore not possible at this time, since the bronze is not signed. However, it was clearly made in one of the leading Parisian workshops as the chasing and gilding are of excellent quality.
Literature
This clockmaker mentioned in Tardy, Dictionnaire des Horlogers Français, Paris 3/1972, p. 116. An identical clock with a dark patinated lion and not signed by the maker auctioned in December 1967 by Ader in Paris (Tardy, La Pendule Française 2ème Partie: Du Louis XVI à nos jours, Paris 1969, p. 235). Cf. also Ottomeyer/Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, vol. I, Munich 1986, illus. 3.11.3 ff. Cf. also Kjellberg, Encyclopédie de la Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Paris 1997, p. 278.