Robert Osmond, maître-fondeur en terre et sable in 1746.

Influenced by the bronzier Philippe Caffieri, Robert Osmond (1711-1789) was one of the first artisans to interpret the emerging neo-classical style. His work was in great demand amongst sophisticated Parisian collectors and aristocratic patrons and as a result, his atelier flourished in the early 1760s. He is recorded as working in the rue des Canettes in the St Sulpice district, later moving to the rue de Mâcon in 1761 when he was elevated to become a juré, a high and powerful rank in the guild. It was in the same year that his nephew Jean-Baptiste Osmond (maître-fondeur in 1764) moved from Normandy to join the atelier, which by that time had grown considerably. Assisted by his nephew, who succeeded him on his death in 1789, the Osmonds’ clients included much of the avant-garde elite of French society.

The present clock, made in the late 18th century, is a variation of a very successful model based on a drawing in the Institut national d’Histoire de l’Art in Paris (H. Ottomeyer/P. Pröschel, Vergoldete Bronzen, Munich, 1986, vol. I, p. 229). A closely related clock, the case also signed by Osmond, was supplied by the marchand-mercier Simon-Philippe Poirier in 1777 to Louis XVI's younger brother, the comte d'Artois, for the salon des jeux in his apartments at the Palais du Temple, Paris (see La Folie d'Artois, Paris, 1988, p. 108, fig. 18). Variations of the model were also used to adorn the tops of cartonniers and serre-papiers, an example of which is in the Musée Jacquemart-André, Paris (P. Verlet, Les Bronzes Dorées du XVIIIe Siècle, Paris, 1987, p. 117, fig. 148). Another version of the model by Osmond, with black marble plinth, was supplied to Louis XVI for the Cabinet de la Pendule in Versailles, while a further example was sold Christie's New York, 19 March 1998, lot 157 ($43,700).