A Louis XVI Gilt Bronze and White and Black Marble Mantel Clock, Circa 1785, made for the Spanish Market

Partridge Fine Arts, London

Born in Eastern France, the clockmaker François-Louis Godon was based in Paris but appears to have worked primarily for the Spanish market and received a royal warrant from Kings Carlos III and IV. He collaborated with other contemporary makers including the horloger ordinaire du Roi Louis XVI Jean-Baptiste André Furet to produce clocks for the Spanish Royal Collection and prominent members of the court, among them the Prince de la Paix and the Duchesses of Alba and Osuna. Most of his work is now in the Royal Palace Madrid or the Museo Nacional des Artes Decorativas in Madrid; an example in the latter is a version of the Sèvres-porcelain mounted gilt bronze Pendule aux Vestales, the case executed by Thomire after a design by Jean-Démosthène Dugourc. Several models of this design survive, the original commissioned by Daguerre in 1788 for Marie-Antoinette’s use at the Tuileries Palace (now in the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris).

Other versions of this model are recorded, including one with a movement by Robinet illustrated in Tardy, La Pendule française dans le monde, Paris 1981, Vol.II p.107, and one with a movement by LeRoy published in Pierre Kjellberg, La Pendule française, Paris 1997 p.203. Further examples that have appeared at auction include Christie’s Paris, 13 December 2006, lot 260 (unsigned); Sotheby’s New York, 22 October 2005, lot 120 (movement by Berthoud); Bearnes, Hampton & Littlewood, Exeter, 30 April 2014, lot 813 (movement by Gavelle), and Christie’s London, 17 November 2020, lot 552 (unsigned).

A clock of this model was in the collection of the late HRH Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother (1900-2002) at Clarence House, London, and another example with a dial signed Terrien and lacking bronze figures and original pendulum was sold Koller Zurich, 24 September 2020, lot 1099. An further almost identical version with slight variation to the roof design is illustrated in Jean-Dominique Augarde, Les Ouvriers du Temps (Geneva 1996), p.301 fig.227.