This clock corresponds to a pen and ink design attributed to the celebrated dessinateur/bronzier , François Vion (maître in 1764). Now in the Bibliothèque Doucet (ref: VI E, 15 Ris), this drawing is inscribed pièce de bureau, and the model became known as 'Douleur' in reference to the death of the dove, symbolized by smoke in the original drawing and later replaced by a foliate sprig. Referred to as La Pleureuse in nineteenth-century inventories and sales, this same design featured again in the Livre de desseins no. 31, in which it was inscribed with Vion's name and priced at 450 livres.

This model enjoyed enduring popularity in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. Marie-Antoinette herself displayed a clock of this model at the Trianon, its dial signed by her clockmaker, Robert Robin, while the comte d'Artois owned L'amour offrant un oiseau à l'Amité, which he kept in his bedroom at the palais du Temple in 1777, and which was supplied to him at a cost of 1,200 livres (Ed. Antiquaires, 'Paris, La Folie D'Artois, exhibition catalogue, 1989, p. 109).

A clock of this model by Lepaute is preserved in the Musée Carnavalet, Paris; further examples are in the Reihe von Ausfhrungen; the Louvre; the Musée des Arts Décoratifs, Paris; the château de Versailles and the Bayreuther Schloss (H. Ottomeyer, P. Pröschel et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, p. 247).