105th Auction
2021/11/13
Lot 273
Pieter Visbach Fecit Haghe
An important and early Dutch "pendule religieuse" in the Hague tradition - 8 days duration
Pieter Visbach, The Hague, also Visbagh (1634-1722) apprenticed to Salomon Coster in 1646; moved to Middelburg in 1652, where he probably worked with Adam Oosterwijck, Severijn's father. After Coster's death in 1659 he returned to The Hague and in 1660 took over the workshop from Coster's widow, accepting the obligation to keep on young Christiaan Reijnaert as an employee. One of the witnesses to this contract of sale was Jacobus van Leeuwarden, Jan Jacobzoon's father. Pieter Visbach was without question the most prominent clockmaker in The Hague until Johannes van Ceulen had become famous. Visbach first rented a house in Wagenstaat/Veerkade and bought it in 1671. He was the first master of the Clockmakers' Guild in The Hague, founded in 1688. His younger brother Geerlof was also a maker of Hague clocks; his son Frederick succeeded his father as keeper of the clock of Nieuwe Kerk in 1705.
Little is known about Visbach's years in Middelburg. There is no information on the location of his workshop and we do not know where, when and from whom Visbach learned to make Hague clocks.
This clock is illustrated and described in H.M. Vehmeyer, "Clocks: Their origin and development 1320-1880", vol. I, Wilsele 2004, pp. 298.