A Louis XVI gilt-bronze "Geoffrin" clock, circa 1780

Late collection Jean Pétin, Rue de Varenne, Paris

Related literature

H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, illustr. pp.160-161, the model illustrated fig. 3.3.1.

C. Baulez, La pendule à la Geoffrin, un modèle à succès, L'estampille l'objet d'art, n°224; april 1989, pp.34-37.

P. Kjellberg, Encyclopédie de la pendule française du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, Paris, 1997, the model illustrated p. 263 B.

The model for this clock is by Laurent Guiard (1723-1788), a pupil of Bouchardon. It represents the Study of Time and exists in several versions.

Madame Geoffrin (1699-1777), who ran one of the most influential salons in Paris, took the young sculptor under her wing, and probably commissioned the original clock from him, which can be found in her inventory after her death in 1777: "une pendule fait à Paris par Musson (...)avec une femme tenant un livre, le tout de fonte" bequeathed to her executor, Monsieur Boutin, a clock "représentant l'Emploi du Temps (...) l'original de toutes celles faites sur ce modèle".

This shape was instantly popular, so much so that the Marquis de Marigny ordered one in 1757 through Madame Geoffrin, and Lazare Duvaux delivered one to the Duc de Bourgogne in 1758 and another a few months later to the Comte du Luc. It was Diderot who coined the term "à la Geoffrin", who received one as a gift in 1768 and described it in "Regrets sur ma vieiile robe de chambre", "ce vide fut rempli par une pendule, et quelle pendule encore? une pendule à la Geoffrin!

Other illustrious collectors owned this clock in the 18th century, including Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill, the Duc de la Vrillière and, above all, the Duc de Choiseul, Louis XV's chief minister and one of the greatest connoisseurs of his time, who even had it depicted on the gold snuff box dated 1770-1771 in his octagonal salon, a snuff box now in the Musée du Louvre but considered to be the masterpiece of this art.

A similar model with a marble base is illustrated in G. de Bellaigue, The James A. de Rothschild Collection at Waddesdon Manor, Fribourg, 1974, Vol.I, no. 17, pp. 104-107. Another example with an ebony base is illustrated in P. Hughes, The Wallace Collection, Catalogue of Furniture, London, 1996, Vol. I, no. 99 (F267), pp. 440-443. A Geoffrin clock was also sold at Christie's Paris, the Dalva Brothers, November 23, 2021, lot 18.

Watchmaker Pierre Gille, known as Gille l'Ainé (cited by Tardy between 1745 and 1778), made several clocks of this model, including one he commissioned gilder Marcel-François Noël to sell, and which is described in the latter's bankruptcy in 1778 ("une grande liseuse à laquelle on donne le nom de la dame Geoffrin, cadran d'émail et dorée d'or moulu, sonnant l'heure et les demies" see C. Baulez, op. cit. p. 40). On October 15, 1782, the gilder François Rémond sold a copy, still by Gille l'Ainé, to a certain Hanier, and two other examples are known to exist, one in the Wilhemshöhe castle in Cassel, from the collections of the Princes of Hesse, and the other in the Spanish royal collections.