Monumental clock with the four Muses of the Hours in white marble, representing two young women draped in the antique style and two naked Graces holding in their right hand a crown of flowers, each pointing to the time in a cartouche with their raised left hand. Depicted standing side by side on a circular base, they support a large sphere of polychrome enamelled metal in trompe l'oeil imitation of lapis lazuli. The sphere presents four windows with Roman and Arabic numerals aligned on a frieze of chased and gilded bronze foliage. Movement signed Le Paute horloger du Roy in Paris 1790. Consulate period, around 1798-1800. Signature J.P. Le Sueur in Fecit 1790 apocryphal. (Missing two thumbs, some fingers and toes restored, some chips at the base, crack restored). H. : 153 cm. Diameter : 65 cm. (Two wooden cases) Provenance: - Ignace Vanlerberghe, for La Folie Beaujon, on the present site of the Hôtel Salomon de Rothschild. - Sotheby's Paris, March 24, 2005, lot 93. - Galerie Jean Lupu, Paris. The sculpture is represented on a drawing now in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge (inv. 3197). The signature "Le Paute horloger du Roy à paris 1790" is the one used by the brothers Jean-André Lepaute (1720-1789), and Jean-Baptiste Lepaute (1727-1802) who were in business from 1758 to 1792. Expert for the Lepaute movement: Mr. Anthony Turner, clock expert (Phone: 0139121191/ Mobile: 0680204497) Email: [email protected] La Folie Beaujon was built between 1781 and 1783 for the King's and Court's banker Nicolas Beaujon (1718-1786), on the plans of the architect Nicolas Girardin; on a domain which occupied twelve hectares between the faubourg du Roule and the Etoile. It was a fashionable architecture of the time: a folly with small gallant apartments, secret staircases and back doors. The Chartreuse Beaujon was a pavilion, the main construction of the Folie Beaujon, which cost 85,000 pounds to build at the time. The Charterhouse was subsequently acquired in 1788 by Pierre-Jacques Bergeret de Grancourt, two years after the death of Nicolas Beaujon. It was sold in 1796 to Ignace Vanlerberghe, who had become rich as a supplier of grain and fodder to the armies of the Republic and then to Napoleon. In the years 1798-1800, La Chartreuse was enlarged and decorated by the architect Coffinet. As shown in an engraving published in 1801 by Kraft and Ransonnette, the clock with the four Graces is already in place in one of the two circular tower-like pavilions. Among the couple's four children, their son Aimé Eugène decided to sell the property by auction at the civil court of the Seine on August 26, 1837, after his mother's death. Jacques-Philippe LE SUEUR (1757-1830) Thanks to the architect Girardin (the same one who was the architect of Nicolas Beaujon), Le Sueur was in charge of the execution of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's tomb, located on the island of Peupliers in Ermenonville, from 1778. Winner of the second prize of Rome for sculpture in 1780 and of the first prize in 1781, he stayed in Rome from 1781 to 1785; then, back in France, he worked on the decoration of the great apartment of the castle of Chantilly. He exhibited for the first time in 1791 and lived in Paris, faubourg Saint-Martin, n° 42. He also fulfilled state commissions, including one of the bas-reliefs that decorated the peristyle of the Pantheon in Paris, The Peace of Presburg for the triumphal arch of the Carrousel, the north pediment of the south wing of the square courtyard of the Louvre palace, a Statue of Montaigne in Libourne, that of the Bailiff of Suffren in Paris on the Louis XVI bridge (now in the Louvre museum), and statues for the Palais du Luxembourg. In 1816, Le Sueur was admitted to the Institut; he was awarded the Légion d'honneur in 1828. Among the numerous works listed since 1780, the Dictionnaire des sculpteurs (op. cit.) mentions: "Quatre figures de femmes, groupe en marbre exécuté pour M. Vanderberg (sic)". The list being chronological, the group should be dated between 1824 and 1828. However, the engraving published in 1801 by Kraft and Ransonnette, illustrating the elevated section of the property, clearly shows the clock with the four Graces, then owned by Ignace Vanlerberghe. Moreover, considering the reversal of fortune of the Vanlerberghe family, involved in the bankruptcy of the banker Ouvrard in 1811, it is unlikely that his heirs - Ignace Vanlerberghe died in 1819 -, who were ruined at the time, would have commissioned such a sculpture. The pseudo-dating of Lami's dictionary of sculptors must therefore be considered with caution. Bibliography : - TARDY, La Pendule française, 2nd part, Paris, 1969. - LAMI, S., Dictionnaire des sculpteurs de l'Ecole française au dix-huitième siècle, Paris, 1911, pages 78 to 82. - KRAFT and RANSONNETTE, Plans, sections, elevations of the most beautiful houses and buildings in France, Paris, 1911, pages 78 to 82.