Pendulum terminal de Louis XVI style presented on a large architectural base in statuary marble, set with a frieze in chiseled gilded bronze of posts undulants, a smiling childish figure modeled with precision, delicacy and made in gilded bronze (perhaps on a model by Louis-Charles-Hippolyte Buhot, 1815-1865, a sculptor whose works were produced in bronze by the Charpentier house from the 1850s). Seated on a small mossy mound, his forehead encircled by a vine leaf chapel, a juvenile Bacchant with barely veiled nudity is about to blow into a Pan flute -musical instrument associated with Bacchus, mysterious divinity of joy and creative fertility - some melodious or lively tunes preluding to the Bacchic festivities.
Surrounded around its perimeter by a vigorous rope motif, the white enamel dial with Roman numerals and graduations for the hours and minutes painted in blue, bears the signature of “Charpentier et Cie/ Bronziers/ Rue Charlot 8 in Paris”, -a well-known Parisian house that has won many awards at major industrial events and is regularly praised for its " bronzes well understood, either in terms of decoration or execution." In 1868, an official note mentioned in these terms the "Charpentier House": "-« Many beautiful things and good things, which says Style Louis XIV, Louis XVI-Excellence of manufacturing; -Luxury of chiseling » (Report of the Engraving and Turning Delegates, read in public session, November 8, 1868, Paris, 1869, pp. 54-55).
Within a half-century carried in the decorative arts by the cheerful charivari of eclecticism, the model of our pendulum perpetuates the tradition of grace and elegance specific to the Louis XVI Style.
Alongside masterfully treated pieces -CHarles Martel fighting Abderame, king of the Saracens, mantelpiece after the group by Jean-François-Théodore Gechter, presented at the Exhibition of Industrial Products of 1849 (Paris, Musée du Louvre, Inv. 0A 11397-11339); Pendulum-sheath, "Delafosse genre of the most amiable originality" based on a model by Frédéric-Eugène Piat, » one of the wonders of the Exhibition " universal of 1878 - the Maison Charpentier et Cie favored the creation of watch pieces then called "High-Style » combining with knowledge formal requirements and antique repertoire tinged with seductive attractions. Abundantly carried in the sales catalogues of the time, this artistic production endowed with a "special stamp" was greatly appreciated by his " numerous and fashionable clientele » attached to an art of easy access and won over by the aesthetics of the appeasement of forms.
Also, captured in a modest pose, the figure of this juvenile Bacchant with tender expression he calmly declines the myth of "Good Bacchus Latin" as defined in 1824 by the scholar Pierre-Nicolas Rolle: a « poetic and allegorical expression of happiness”.
The Statuette of a seated child playing the pan flute » published by the manufacturer of art bronzes Denière (Sale Denier, 2nd from March 10-12, 1902, n ° 592 from the catalog) like some paintings "Neo-Greeks"by Jean-Léon Gêrome (1824-1904) made in the 1850s-1860s similarly exploit this subdued vein of the Bacchic imagination.
S.-L.
Original movement, cleaned, overhauled and in working order.
A commented notice of this timepiece representative of the Neo-Greek aesthetic of the 1860s as well as a brief history of the Maison Charpentier et Cie (1840-1890) have been written.
