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Lot Essay
Similarly to lot 52 in this sale, this clock is the embodiment of the eighteenth-century French fascination with the exotic. The Indian rhinoceros, on which most depictions of this novel animal were based, was named Clara, the tame adopted animal of the director of the Dutch East India Company Jan Albert Sichterman in Bengal. Clara was subsequently owned by Douwe Mout van der Meer and disembarked at Rotterdam on 22 July 1741 to begin her seventeen-year tour of Europe. The highlights of her European journey included posing for Johann Joachim Kändler from the Meissen porcelain factory in 1747 and being received by Louis XV at the Royal Menagerie at Versailles in 1749. During her five months in Paris she was seen by the naturalist Buffon, and Jean-Baptiste Oudry painted a life-size portrait of her. In 1750 she travelled to Italy, where she visited the Baths of Diocletian; she arrived in Venice in 1751 where she was painted by Pietro Longhi and starred in the carnival, see G. Ridley, Clara's Grand Tour: Travels with a Rhinoceros in Eighteenth-Century Europe, London, 2004.
The marchands-merciers seized this opportunity to produce and market three types of clock incorporating rhinoceri, as studied by T.H. Clarke in The Rhinoceros from Dürer to Stubbs 1515-1799 (London, 1986). The earliest version of a mantel clock with a rhinoceros base predates 1747, when the inventory drawn upon the death of the wife of mâtre-fondeur Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain, mentions: deux pendules au rhinoceros l'une pour modle et l'autre finie prises ensembles la somme de 140 l. As Clara was not shown in Paris until 1749, Saint-Germain must have taken inspiration from secondary sources such as drawings. The earliest group of rhinoceros clocks, to which this lot belongs, was based on Albrecht Dürer's celebrated engraving of 1515 with the large scales of the rhinoceros' legs, and is represented by a clock formerly in the Alexander Collection, sold Christie's, New York, 30 April 1999, lot 115 ($167,500); one illustrated in E. Niehüser, French Bronze Clocks, 1700-1830: A Study of the Figural Images, Atglen, 1999, p. 111, fig. 176; and one sold from the Collection Viel, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 24 May 1932, lot 51.
The second group is fitted with the figure of a rhinoceros probably based on Johann Joachim Kändler's model with the beast being slightly less stylized and its head rearing. An example of this model in bronze is illustrated in J.-D. Augarde, 'Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain (1719-1791): Bronzearbeiten zwischen Rocaille und Klassizismus,' H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, Vol. 2, p. 525, fig. 2; another was sold anonymously, Christie's, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 181 ($182,000).
The third model was almost certainly executed in 1749 by Saint-Germain when the rhinoceros was in Paris. Examples of this type include one in the Grog-Carven collection at the Musée du Louvre, see P. Kjellberg, L'Encyclopédie de La Pendule Française, Paris, 1997, p. 129, fig. D; one formerly in the Riahi Collection and sold Christie’s, London, 6 December 2012, lot 18 (£181,250); and another previously in the Roberto Polo collection, sold Sotheby's New York, 3 November 1989, lot 44. A clock of this model is depicted on the mantelpiece in the painting of Marie-Elisabeth de Bourbon-Parma by Laurent Pecheux, now in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence.
The marchands-merciers seized this opportunity to produce and market three types of clock incorporating rhinoceri, as studied by T.H. Clarke in The Rhinoceros from Dürer to Stubbs 1515-1799 (London, 1986). The earliest version of a mantel clock with a rhinoceros base predates 1747, when the inventory drawn upon the death of the wife of mâtre-fondeur Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain, mentions: deux pendules au rhinoceros l'une pour modle et l'autre finie prises ensembles la somme de 140 l. As Clara was not shown in Paris until 1749, Saint-Germain must have taken inspiration from secondary sources such as drawings. The earliest group of rhinoceros clocks, to which this lot belongs, was based on Albrecht Dürer's celebrated engraving of 1515 with the large scales of the rhinoceros' legs, and is represented by a clock formerly in the Alexander Collection, sold Christie's, New York, 30 April 1999, lot 115 ($167,500); one illustrated in E. Niehüser, French Bronze Clocks, 1700-1830: A Study of the Figural Images, Atglen, 1999, p. 111, fig. 176; and one sold from the Collection Viel, Galerie Georges Petit, Paris, 24 May 1932, lot 51.
The second group is fitted with the figure of a rhinoceros probably based on Johann Joachim Kändler's model with the beast being slightly less stylized and its head rearing. An example of this model in bronze is illustrated in J.-D. Augarde, 'Jean-Joseph de Saint-Germain (1719-1791): Bronzearbeiten zwischen Rocaille und Klassizismus,' H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, Vol. 2, p. 525, fig. 2; another was sold anonymously, Christie's, New York, 2 November 2000, lot 181 ($182,000).
The third model was almost certainly executed in 1749 by Saint-Germain when the rhinoceros was in Paris. Examples of this type include one in the Grog-Carven collection at the Musée du Louvre, see P. Kjellberg, L'Encyclopédie de La Pendule Française, Paris, 1997, p. 129, fig. D; one formerly in the Riahi Collection and sold Christie’s, London, 6 December 2012, lot 18 (£181,250); and another previously in the Roberto Polo collection, sold Sotheby's New York, 3 November 1989, lot 44. A clock of this model is depicted on the mantelpiece in the painting of Marie-Elisabeth de Bourbon-Parma by Laurent Pecheux, now in the Palazzo Pitti, Florence.