A pendulum clock with Marcus Tullius Cicero
by Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751 - 1843)
Ormolu, blackened numerals, blued steel hands, brass. 14-day running with thread suspension of the pendulum, half-hourly striking on a bell. Unique, imposing design, cast in several parts and screw-mounted. Very well preserved fire gilding. Engraved "THOMIRE A PARIS" below the back left of the base. H 69, W 54, D 27 cm.
Around 1800 - 1815.
Pierre-Philippe Thomire (1751 - 1843) learned his craft in the workshop of the famous Parisian bronze maker Pierre Gouthière, an outstanding ciseleur-doreur. In the 1780s he received his first commissions for the court. He achieved his breakthrough under Napoleon, who provided him with numerous commissions. Among many others, he created the famous cradle for the King of Rome, which is now in the Treasury, Kunsthistorisches Museum Vienna (inv. WS XIV 28).
Thomire specialised in the production of fully sculptured bronzes and figures with the finest chasing and high-quality patination. In 1770, at the age of 19, he cast a bust of Voltaire after Jean-Pierre Pigalle, and in 1789, the year of the revolution, he created the bust of the Prussian Prince Henry after the model of Jean Antoine Houdon (SPSG Skulpturensammlung). The sculptural mantel clock shown here is as yet unpublished, but there is also no catalogue raisonné of Thomire's bronzes.
The Roman author, philosopher and statesman Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 - 43 BC) was held in high esteem in Enlightenment France during Thomire's lifetime. Voltaire admired him and dedicated a play to him. The French revolutionaries modelled their speeches on his instructions. It is quite conceivable that this pendulum clock with his portrait was placed in an official building or a court.
Provenance
Belgian private ownership.
Literature
Cf. Alcouffe/Dion-Tenenbaum/Mabille, Les bronzes d’ameublement du Louvre, Dijon 2004, cat. no. 136, for a clock commemorating the marriage of Napoleon and Marie-Louise in the château de Compiègne, with similar paw feet and garlands.
For more on Thomire see Harris Cohen, Pierre-Philippe Thomire - Unternehmer und Künstler, in: Ottomeyer/Pröschel (eds.), Vergoldete Bronzen. Die Bronzearbeiten des Spätbarock und Klassizismus, vol. II, Munich 1986, p. 657 ff.