Important Clock "study And Philosophy" Louis XVI XVIIIth Period

Important mantel clock "Study and Philosophy" dial signed *Ridel in Paris Louis XVI XVIIIth period. The clock representing a young man dressed in antique style drawing on a tablet on one side and on the other a young woman dressed in antique style holding a book, both seated, leaning against an architectural body forming the case movement. The case of the movement is decorated in the lower part with a bas relief representing putti studying astronomy, in the upper part a delicately chiseled eagle placed on a torch decorated with floral garlands united by a ribbon forming a knot. White enameled dial attributed to **Dubuisson signed *Ridel in Paris indicating the hours and days in Arabic numerals. The whole rests on a base in molded white Carrara marble decorated with a bas relief in gilded bronze, in the center representing musical cherubs, highlighted by a frieze of pearls and ending with six spinning top legs in gilded bronze. Movement with dates and original wire suspension operating with its key (revised and cleaned by our watchmaker) Mercury gilding with double patina and original brown patina in very good condition. *“Ridel in Paris” Laurent Ridel, one of the most important Parisian watchmakers of the end of the 18th century and the first years of the following century, signed his works with the words “Ridel in Paris”. Although the date of registration of his letters of mastery is unknown to us, we know that he set up his workshop on rue aux Ours and that he immediately became very well known among Parisian lovers of luxury watchmaking. Like the best Parisian watchmakers of his time, Ridel called on the best craftsmen to make the cases of his clocks, collaborating in particular with the bronze makers Feuchère, Denière and Deverberie, with the enamellers Coteau and Merlet and by calling on Monginot l 'elder for the springs. He quickly built up a wealthy clientele including Jean-Marie Chamboissier, the jeweler Louis-Nicolas Duchesne and Mesdames de France, daughters of Louis XV, for whom Ridel delivered a clock in 1789 intended for their Bellevue castle. ** Étienne Gobin, known as Dubuisson (1731-1815), is one of the best Parisian enamellers of the end of the 18th century. Towards the mid-1750s he worked at the Sèvres factory, subsequently establishing his own workshop. It is mentioned in the 1790s in the rue de la Huchette and around 1812, in the rue de la Calandre. Specializing in enameled watch cases and dials, he is renowned for his exceptional skill and representation of detail. Often wrongly called "Les Arts et les Lettres", "L'Etude et la Philosophie", "aux Maréchaux" or "Les Liseuses", this pendulum model appears only under the name "L'Etude" in commercial correspondence. between the engraver-gilder François Rémond and the merchant-merchant Dominique Daguerre, the most important merchant of luxury objects of the reign of Louis XVI. Made from 1784, the composition directly declined two figures created in 1776 by the sculptor Louis-Simon Boizot (1743-1809) for the Royal Manufacture of Sèvres representing a young girl reading and a young man writing under the names of "the study” and “philosophy”; see a Sèvres biscuit of this model which is kept in the Jones collection at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London (illustrated in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, op.cit., Band I, Munich, 1986, p.294, fig .4.17.2). These figures were exploited by Daguerre who commissioned Rémond to lean them against a terminal supporting a clock movement topped with an eagle, thus creating one of the most accomplished neoclassical clocks in Parisian decorative arts at the end of the reign of Louis XVI which immediately met with immense success with the great amateurs of the time. In 1788 Daguerre delivered two clocks of this model for the Château de Saint-Cloud, one for the Salon des Jeux, the other for the King's Cabinet.