Lot 369

Adam Auguste Léchopié à Paris, Height 375 mm, circa 1792
An important mantel clock with half hour/hour strike - Allegory of the Fall of the Monarchy of Louis XVI
Case: ormolu, white marble base, blue and white glass. Dial: enamel. Movm.: circular brass full plate movement, 1 hammer / 1 bell, 2 barrels, anchor escapement, count wheel, silk suspended short pendulum.
A white rectangular marble plinth with round, lateral protrusions supports a firegilt bronze base in the same shape as the plinth. The bronze base is surrounded by a blue glass frame behind an open-work balustrade. In the centre a cube-shaped structure decorated with laurel garlands sits on a truncated column; the edifice has small, embrasure-like windows on the sides and is decorated with a glazed, dome-shaped lantern. To the left, a small boy in a frock coat and breeches holds a hat with a cockade in his left hand - the hat is filled with bread. The boy has a large coin in his other, outstretched hand. At his feet lies a fallen down and broken Ionian capital. Another, much larger boy stands on the other side of the clock-face, he wears a frock coat and a hat with a cockade. His breeches are tattered, with one of his stockings slipped down. His left shoe has a hole and shows the boy’s toe. His pose is somewhat proprietorial, with his right foot on a fallen down architrave. He looks at the observer and his right arm embraces the building while his left hand points towards it.
"The Flight to Varennes" - a fine pendulum clock making a political statement
"The Flight to Varennes" describes the failed attempt of King Louis XVI and his family to escape from revolutionary France during the night of 20-21 June, 1792. On June 22, Louis and Marie Antoinette were forced to return to Paris. The royal carriage was accompanied by a steadily increasing crowd, hurling abuse at the king and his wife and lashing out against the royal guards on the carriage. Four days later, on June 25, the group arrived back at the capital and was received by La Fayette and his staff. Surrounded by a massive crowd of people and accompanied by members of the National and the Swiss Guards, the cavalcade moved at walking speed towards the Tuleries Palace, where it arrived at 7.45pm.
The coloured etching "Retour de Varennes. Arrivée de Louis Seize à Paris, le 25 juin 1791" by Jean Duplessis-Bertaux and a drawing by Jean-Louis Prieur captures the subject in detail. The right hand part of the painting shows a high, four-floor edifice that evokes the antique building style of the Romans; it has deep-seated embrasure-like windows and a distinctive, dome-shaped lantern on the roof. It is a portrait of the "Barrière du Roule" (one of the tollhouses of Paris), which was built as part of the Wall of the Farmers-General ("Fermiers généraux"). It was a creation of the controversial neoclassical architect Claude-Nicolas Ledoux (1736-1806) and erected for collecting excise duties and internal tariffs. Our pendulum clock was designed to resemble the "Barrière du Roule"; the broken column sections on the ground symbolize the downfall of the monarchy. Both figures in the motif wear tattered culottes, the breeches that - before 1789 - were only worn by members of the nobility and the bourgeoisie. Both, however, wear cockades on their hats to show that they are supporters of the revolution. The figure on the right stands on the fallen architrave in an almost triumphant pose; he points to the tollhouse, where the duties were collected by the Farmers-General - according to the Jacobins a group of predatory tyrants. The boy on the left - the figure is considerably smaller than that on the right - holds an overlarge coin in his outstretched hand. His hat is filled with bread, intended as a reference to the end of Louis XVI’s rule and his policy of state regulation of the grain trade, which often meant that large parts of the population had no money to buy bread and were starving.
Even with extensive literature review we were not able to find a pendulum clock with a comparable motif.
Adam Auguste Léchopié (L'Échopie) became a master clockmaker in 1758. He signed his work with LÉCHOPIÉ A PARIS and was still active around 1800; his workshop was located at 67, Rue-Neuve-des-Petits-Champs. Léchopié used cases created by Osmond and by Thomire for his pendulum clocks.
Source: https://watch-wiki.org/index.php?title=L%C3%A9chopi%C3%A9,_Adam, as of 03/25/2019.