Table Clock "surprise Table" By Ferdinand Wurtel

Table "to surprise", or table-clock Signed Ferdinand Wurtel, circa 1830-1840 Oil on canvas, and metal movement Period frame in wood and gilded stucco, with spandrels A couple walks on the road, him hands in their pockets, she weeping, with children, a car and a dog walking away, with the steeple of a church in the background. The clock of this one is actually a watch face inserted into the canvas. In operation, the hours strike… Ferdinand Wurtel, mechanic-watchmaker, is mentioned in the Almanach de Paris (1826) as the owner of a store in rue Vivienne, in Paris. He seems to have made a specialty of boxes, or musical portfolios of pictures-clocks, etc. He is certainly not the painter of the painting which only appears there as a support for mechanics, painting undoubtedly due to the brushes of a subcontractor, student-rapin of a painting school who thus rounded out his income ( and future big names did not disdain to be able to exercise, fabrics provided and paid!). Some of these clock tables function like real music boxes, with several trendy arias, taken from the great successes of the operas of the moment ("The white lady", "Robert le Diable", etc.). The subjects of the painting corresponded to them, as long as we could inscribe a bell tower in the decoration! The owner then chose to play one or the other of these ritornellos to amuse or surprise the company. Such paintings were a luxury accessible to bourgeois fortunes, and spread in the provinces under Louis-Philippe. Fragile, few have survived ...