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. The originals are priceless, and the most prized replicas, both then and now, were made by Beurdeley, Dasson, and as here Millet.
