Emmanuel-Alfred Beurdeley (1847-1919)

gilt and patinated bronze, green marble

stamped ‘BY’ and ‘P20’

Please note that this piece currently located in Hong Kong

Pierre Lécoules collection, Paris.

The Three Graces have been popular with artists across many media throughout history – representing joy, elegant radiance and abundance, they have been depicted by many of the greats of art history including Botticelli, Raphael, Rubens and Canova.

The decorative arts have similarly taken up the motif at various points, including several sculptural designs for clocks like the present example in which the dial is held aloft by the Graces. Madame du Barry, the Louis XV’s last mistress and a huge influencer of artistic taste in the French court, is recorded as owning a clock “representing the Three Graces carrying a vase within which is a turning dial and on which a cupid indicates the time with his arrow”

Another clock of the same model, though the Graces and cupid are in gilt-bronze, is in the Château de Chantilly – in her study on the collection at Chantilly, Anne Forray-Carlier catalogues their example as “circa 1775” but notes that it is possible that it was created later in the 1840s, with the work produced by Beurdeley of such high quality in this period that it is difficult to distinguish from eighteenth-century work.

Another well-documented model of a similar clock, with the Graces wrapped in drapery and with one figure facing inwards, was first designed by François Vion around 1770 examples of this clock are in the collection of the Louvre (OA 5433) and the Huntington Museum. A different version of the same subject, though treated in the Empire style that characterised the early nineteenth century, can be seen in the Château de Fontainebleau in Empress Josephine’s Bedchamber.

The Beurdeley family created luxury furniture over three generations, and received the high honour of a gold medal at not one but two international exhibitions (in 1867 and 1889). The grandfather, father and son differed slightly in their specialisms: while Jean Beurdeley, the founder of the house, made original designs, his son and grandson tended to focus more on faithful copies of prestigious pieces from the eighteenth century. Their pieces were immensely sought after, including by Emperor Napoleon III and his wife Eugénie, for whom they supplied a marriage coffer in 1853. The firm thrived throughout the second half of the century, enjoying a notably strong client base in the United States, before finally closing in 1895. The remaining furniture was sold at a spectacular series of auctions from 1897 to 1898, and Alfred-Emmanuel Beurdeley devoted the remainder of his life to collecting art and sculpture, leaving 25,000 francs to Paris’ Musée des arts decoratifs in his will.