A Louis XVI Style Cartel Clock and Companion Barometer

Object Description

A Louis XVI Style Gilt-Bronze and Jasperware Mounted Cartel Clock and Companion Barometer, After the Model Attributed to Pierre Gouthière.

The clock and barometer each surmounted by accompanying thermometers, jasperware plaques and ribbon tied finials. The gilt-bronze cases embellished with garlands of roses, cornucopia, fruiting vines and oak leaves in reference to the four seasons. Flanking the upper Jasperware plaque – two heads with delicate wings personifying the wind.

The clock with white enamelled dial, hours marked in Roman numerals and seconds in divisions of five in Arabic numerals. The eight-day twin-train movement with anchor escapement striking half and full hours on a bell, stamped with the number ’80’. The companion aneroid barometer with conforming white enamel dial indicating barometric range TEMPETE, Gx Pluie, Pluie Ou VARIABLE, Beau Temps, Beau Fixe, TRES SEC, (Stormy, Rainy Variable, Nice Weather, Fair Weather and Very Dry). The thermometers marked with the Réaumur scale. The thermometer set above the barometer, consists of an alcohol filled glass thermometer capillary tube with a scale running from 25 degrees below zero to 35 degrees above, following the Réaumur scale.
The unusually cold temperatures attained in Paris during the winter of 1785 are indicated on the two thermometers and explains the extremes of the scale used.

The present cartel clock and matching barometer are based on a model attributed to the bronzier Pierre-Joseph-Désiré Gouthière (d. 1813), originally from the Château de Saint-Cloud and now part of the permanent collection at the Musée du Louvre (OA 5493 and OA 5494).

Stamped ‘P G’ to the back of the bronze in the cast.

French, Circa 1880.

Object History

In the second half of the 19th century, furniture and works of art, once the preserve of the aristocracy and often literally made for royalty, were transferred, often through war and revolution, to state museum collections, many via pioneering private collectors. Before this time, there were very few museums.

The examples in the Louvre (shown in an old black and white photograph), attributed to the bronze maker Pierre Gouthière and the horloger Carcany, were made circa 1785 for a member of Louis XVI’s court, very possibly for Queen Marie Antoinette herself. By the mid-19th century, they were at the Château de Saint-Cloud, perhaps in the Salon of Empress Eugenie. With the fall of the Second Empire, they were transferred to the Musée du Louvre, where they were properly documented, photographed, published, and exhibited.

The fashion for the Ancien Régime and ‘tous les Louis’ drove a new breed of collectors, such as Sir Richard Wallace and Henry Clay Frick. Public exhibitions of royal furniture and works of art gave contemporary makers the opportunity to examine these masterpieces up close for the first time. Makers competed to produce the most magnificent replicas, and versions of these clocks and barometers were exactingly made during the late 19th century.

Object Literature

C. Dreyfus, Musée du Louvre, pl. LV, no. 392 & 393, for the illustration of the 18th century examples attributed to Gouthière (the 18th century examples attributed to Gouthière).
C. Dreyfus, Mobilier et Objets d’Art du XVIIe du XVIIIe Siècle, Musée du Louvre, Département des objets d’art, Paris, 1913, No. 358 ‘Cartel et thermomère’ and no. 359 ‘Barometère’, p. 65 (the 18th century examples attributed to Gouthière).
D. Alcouffe, Gilt Bronzes in the Louvre, Paris, 2014, p. 213. (the 18th century examples attributed to Gouthière).
C. Mestdagh, L’ameublement d’art français: 1850-1900, Paris, 2010, fig. 258., p. 221(for a pair by Emmanuel-Alfred (dit Alfred II) Beurdeley (1847-1919)).

Object Details