Bronze Mantle Clock with the bust of George Washington

BRONZE ORMOLU MANTLE CLOCK WITH THE BUST OF GEORGE WASHINGTON
Henri-Alexandre Peupin (1809-1871)
Paris, France, c. 1824

The bust of George Washington with neck scarf, vest and frock coat on a socle, on a plinth inscribed on its front edge "NE QUID DETRIMENTI CAPIAT RES PUBLICA," above a cornice with egg and dart molding above the case with bronze, machine turned clock face with Roman chapter centered above an appliqué of an American eagle with a banner inscribed E PLURIBUS UNUM, clutching an olive branch and arrows above a molded plinth on molded pad feet. It is signed and dated on the main spring, October 1824. The clock has an 8-day movement with anchor escapement, silk-thread suspended pendulum with a count wheel striking the bell every hour and half hour. The clock face bares the impressed initials, T N., and its backside is marked by Harry Haley (1870-1950), a clock maker, working at 12 Church Street, Teddington, in south-west London, who restored the clock twice, in June 1905 and October 1919.

H: 21¼" W: 8¼" D: 5½"

Condition: Very Good: The clock works have been recently cleaned and put in working order. The case has been re-patinated and re-lacquered to conform with historical norms.

Henri-Alexandre PEUPIN was a Parisian spring and clockmaker, working first at Rue de la Harpe by 1812 and beginning in 1820, around the corner at Rue St-Séverin, where the present clock would have been made. Peupin trained under Claude-Armand Lory who had trained under the renowned clockmaker Robert Robin (1741-1799). He founded the "Chronometric Union” (1845-1848). He became famous both as a clockmaker and then as a politician, indeed, important enough to be immortalized in a 1849 caricature by Honoré Daumier, in Charivari titled the "Representatives Represented." Although the political leanings of other Parisian clockmakers are unknown, it is clear from Peupin's later political activities that he held strong republican sentiments and it is therefore entirely fitting and uniquely significant that he produced clocks with the bust of the world's most famous Republican.

With Philippe Buchez (1796-1865), Peupin assisted in founding the utopian, socialist, Christian worker-owned and operated newspaper L'Atelier (The Workshop), in 1840 and worked toward the overthrow of the Louis-Philippe regime (1848). He was elected deputy of the Seine to the Constituent Assembly on April 23, 1848, and was appointed
first of six secretaries. He was subsequently re-elected to the Constituent National Assembly in 1849.

At the beginning of the 19th century, many bronze mantle clocks having a full-body standing statue of George Washington were made in France for the American market, such as those made by Jean-Babtiste Dubuc (active 1790-1819), who used Thomas Cheesmen's engraving of John Trumbull's 1792 portrait painting General Washington at Trenton as a model for the standing figure. There was much variation in size, in the facial features of Washington and in the appliqués and decoration of the case. Many of these Washington clocks bare an appliqué with the motto " First in war, First in Peace, First in the hearts of his Countrymen." A smaller number of the variants with a bust of Washington centered above the case such as those made by Louis Mallet (active 1790-1824), and Honoré Pons (active 1806-1847), are also known. The bust on these is typically without clothes in the manner of antiquity. The bust of Washington on the subject clock seems to have been drawn from Rembrandt Peal's 1823 "Porthole" portrait.

This is a very rare example of the bust raised on a socle and with the phrase NE QUID DETRIMENTI CAPIAT RES PUBLICA cast into the plinth. This Latin phrase was used beneath a 1781 engraving by Noel Le Mire after a 1779 painting of Washington by Jean Baptiste La Paon, now lost. According to the historian and scholar Joseph Downs it translates to "The State must harbor nothing detrimental." (Downs 1946, 164). According to scholar Emilio Capettini, it would also have been recognized by Washington's contemporaries as part of the official formula of the senatus consultum ultimum, "an emergency measure used by the senate in the late Republic to respond to threats to the stability of the State," and could be interpreted as "the consuls should see to it that the state receives no harm." Le Mire, it seems, was commenting on Washington's role as temporary defender of the American State against the British.

Provenance: Israel Sack, Inc. New York, 1965
Bernard & S. Dean Levy, New York
The Westervelt Company, Tuscaloosa, Alabama.