BY LOUIS-ISIDORE CHOISELAT, CIRCA 1810.

Lesieur, a Parisian clockmaker recorded Vielle rue du Temple in 1806 and rue de la Verrerie 1812-1820.

The figurative clock was designed after a painting of 1802 by Baron Pierre-Narcisse Guérin (French, 1774-1833), now in the Musée du Louvre. This painting was engraved by C. Normand following its exhibition in the Paris salon of 1802, see Alvar González-Palacios, 'Le Vendite Demidoff E Ruspoli Talleyrand', Arte Illustrata, 17/18, 1969, p. 129, fig. 29, and illustrates a story concerning Venus inspired by Virgil's Aeneid, later recounted in Jean Racine's, Phèdre. Hippolytus, a devotee of Diana, stands bedside a hero's altar, which incorporates the clock-face framed by an armorial trophy. He protests his innocence before his father Theseus against a charge leveled by his stepmother, Phaedra. The plinth's bas-relief tablet reveals his death, caused by Neptune's unjust punishment.

Guérin's painting, together with a clock of identical model attributed to Galle, is illustrated in H. Ottomeyer and P. Pröschel, et al., Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, I, p. 370, figs. 5.13.13 and 5.13.15. A clock of this model is held in the Spanish Royal Collections, see J. Ramon Colon de Carvajal, Catalogo del Relojes del Patrimonio Nacional, Madrid, 1987, p. 188. A clock of this design was sold by the Hon. Richard Acton, see Christie's, London, 2 July 1981, lot 35, and another was sold anonymously at Christie's, London, 11 December 1980, lot 41. A further example is in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, see Iraida Bott, et. al., Russkaya mebel ot Petrovskogo Barokko do Aleksandravskogo Ampira, Moscow, 2004, p. 167.