A Large Louis XVI Gilt Bronze Mantel Clock, Circa 1780

Partridge Fine Arts, London

Robert Robin was one of the most important Parisian clockmakers of the last quarter of the 18^th century. He was a technical innovator who had two inventions approved by the Royal Academy of Sciences in 1778, one of which was integrated into an astronomic clock acquired by Louis XVI’s Menus Plasirs service the same year. He received numerous official and royal appointments, firstly as horloger to the Duc de Chartres in 1786, followed by Valet de Chambre-Horloger Ordinaire du Roi in 1783 and Valet de Chambre-Horloger Ordinaire de la Reine in 1786. He continued working during the Revolution and in 1794 was named clockmaker to the Republican authorities and in 1796 to the Directoire government.

Robin provided movements for longcase clocks by important court ébénistes such as Riesener, Weisweiler and Schwerdfeger and for gilt bronze cases designed by leading artisans including Thomire, Rémond, and in the case of the present clock, Robert and Jean-Baptiste Osmond. The bronziers Robert Osmond (1711-1789) and his nephew Jean-Baptiste (1742-after 1790) ran a thriving bronze casting and chasing atelier, working in both the Louis XV and neoclassical Transition and Louis XVI styles. A gilt bronze clock of virtually identical design to the offered lot stamped OSMOND is illustrated in Roland de l’Espée, ‘Die Osmond, ein Familienbetrieb und seine Produktion,’ Vergoldete Bronzen (Munich 1986), Vol.II p.543 fig.5, and another was sold Christie’s Paris, 23 June 2005, lot 470. The only design variation is the form of the finial, which is an acanthus bud on the first example and a slightly smaller pinecone on the second. Another unsigned example of this model is illustrated in Pierre Kjellberg, La Pendule française, Paris 1997 p.216 fig. A.