An early Louis XVI gilt bronze and ebony mantel clock representing Urania

An early Louis XVI gilt bronze and ebony mantel clock representing Urania after a model by Robert Osmond. 

Circa 1774 

The dial signed Duval à Rouen and signed on the back by the enameller Barbezat. 

The spring signed and dated Richard Octobre 1774

This model which represents Urania with her attributes astride a truncated column supporting the clock case, originates with Robert Osmond whose design is preserved in an album in the Bibliothèque Jacques Doucet, Paris (n° 47) where it was described as a” boite avec une figure appuyée sur un livre à côté d’un globe et plusieurs guirlandes qu’entoure le tambour “at a cost of 781 livres.

Height: 56.5 cm. (22 ¼ in.)    Width: 41.3 cm. (16 ¼ in.)                 Depth: 25 cm. (9 ¾ in.)

Other examples of this model exist:

• One signed Denis Masson in the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, which is incomplete and has a later marble base illustrated in the Catalogue of the Jones Collection, vol. II, n°  257 

• One signed Causard in the Landesmuseum, Stuttgart, illustrated in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, vol. 1, Munich, 1986, p. 166, fig. 3.4.3

•  One formerly in the collection of Pascal Izarn signed Delachengt à Paris illustrated in P. Kjellberg, , Encyclopédie de la Pendule Française du Moyen Age au XX Siècle, Paris, 1997, p.253, fig. F