French Transition mantel clock

The approximately two-week movement has a verge escapement. The striking train with countwheel sounds the hours fully and the half hours with a single strike. The white enamel dial has an outer ring with Arabic numerals and an inner ring with Roman numerals.
Both the movement and the dial are signed Viger à Paris.

The clockmaker François Viger (Rue St.Denis 1745-1783) regularly collaborated with the ébéniste Balthasar Lieutaud (master on 20 March 1749, died 10 May 1780). Lieutaud specialised in the crafting of clock cases and worked in a very pure Louis XV style, as well as the neoclassicist style from 1770 onwards. Both Viger and Lieutaud worked with the best bronze casters of their day: Jean-Joseph de Saint Germain, Charles Grimpelle, Edme Roye and Philippe Caffieri (Caffieri the Younger).

The movement is housed in a symmetrical, accolade-shaped gilt bronze case decorated along the dial with an elegantly draped festoon. The case is crowned with a stack of books, a lyre and a sprig of laurel. Below the glazed lenticle is an arc encompassing a bust of a man from classical antiquity. At its four corners, the clock stands on feet in the shape of dog’s heads.

The iconography may refer to loyalty, in which case the central figure might be identified as Odysseus, who - after 22 years of absence - was recognised by nobody, except his dog Argos.