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David Roentgen: Nemours Clock

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David Roentgen: Nemours Clock

Program information

Abraham and David Roentgen were renowned German cabinetmakers whose workshop was famed throughout Europe for its exquisite marquetry work and complex mechanical devices. Proportioned for a stately public room or library, this musical clock is likely to have been the first Roentgen object to reach the United States, belonging to Gouverneur Morris, one of the nation’s founding fathers. Not only does it tell time, but it also displays the interior works, which are hidden in most clocks.

This clock, from The Nemours Foundation, is featured in the exhibition Extravagant Inventions: The Princely Furniture of the Roentgens (on view October 30, 2012–January 27, 2013).

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Rolltop Desk by David Roentgen: Animation

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Pair of seated figures with globes

Chantilly 

Date:
ca. 1735
Culture:
French, Chantilly
Medium:
Soft-paste porcelain painted with colored enamels over tin glaze, gilt bronze
Dimensions:
H. 6 1/2 in. (16.5 cm) (approximate)
Classification:
Ceramics
Credit Line:
Bequest of Douglas Dillon, 2003
Accession Number:
2004.361.3, .4

This artwork is currently on display in Gallery 201

  • Description

    In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Asian countries were a source of considerable fascination and allure to Europeans. Asian figures were frequently chosen as subjects to decorate ceramics and other works of art produced in Europe, but these depictions were rarely based on firsthand knowledge and thus were usually fanciful. This figure of a Chinese man seated with a globe was intended to be decorative, but also may allude to China’s sophisticated understanding of astronomy during this period.

  • Provenance

    Jacques Doucet (before 1912; sale, Paris, 1912, no. 106) ; Mortimer L. Schiff (before 1938) ; [ sale, Christie's, New York , June 22, 1938, lot 24 ] ; A. Chester Beatty ; [ sale, Christie's, London , November 29, 1973, lot 49; sold to Dillon ] ; Douglas Dillon (1973–2003; bequeathed to MMA)

  • See also
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    In the Museum
    Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History
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