Some of my images may be better described as illustrations - trade (Fig.4), greeting, and post cards (Fig.5), for example - or they are early photographs, which were not produced for artistic reasons. Most often, I find none when studying auction catalogues and art books, and when scouting museums. This may sound like a large number, but such artworks actually are quite uncommon. My computer now stores nearly 1300 “horology in art” digital images. Although valuable to present-day horologists who can learn from period views of timekeepers, those paintings were not done to advertise horology, but to include timekeepers as important characters in the narratives of the pictures. I quickly realized that the clocks and watches in these paintings were not there by accident, but were included as symbols and metaphors for affluence, sophistication, discipline, and human mortality. It appeared in a 2005 Christie’s art catalogue, and I obtained permission from the auction house to reprint it on the back cover of the February 2006 NAWCC Bulletin.įrom then, I began my search for more such fine-art images. Paintings, dating back to the 13th century origins of mechanical timekeeping, more truly represent “horology in art.” My attention to those artworks began with a Renaissance painting by Bolognese artist Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) of an African woman posed with a German gilt-metal table clock (Fig.3). Most of these vintage photographs are not recognized as fine art, but instead as documentary records of people and places. My collection of original stereoviews and Brady photos, all with clocks in the scene, now numbers more than a hundred examples. I wrote about this in the October, 2002, NAWCC Bulletin. I also discovered that some photographic studio portraits by the famous American photographer Mathew Brady (1822-1896) included a “Reaper” model cast-metal figural mantel clock (Fig.2). 1), and I published two articles about this in the NAWCC Bulletin in April, 2002, and June, 2007. In the 1990’s, I began to collect 19th century 3D cards showing clocks and watches (Fig. My interest in horology images first ignited as a collector of old stereoscopic photographs. A culmination will be the “Horology in Art” conference I am organizing as Chairman of the NAWCC Time Symposium Committee, October 26-28, 2017, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Also since 1954, other horology historians have sometimes noted fine art images showing timekeepers, but not in the same focused and intensive way as Chapuis, and now me. Its 669-page exhibit catalogue, written in Italian by Guiseppe Brusa, included many full-color plates of artworks depicting clocks and watches. In 2005, an exhibit - “La misura del tempo”- in Trento, Italy, featured the rich history of Italian horology. The 154-page book now is somewhat rare and costly, its text is in French, and its 212 illustrations are in black-and-white. In 1954, the renowned Swiss scholar Alfred Chapuis (1880-1958) published De Horologiis in Arte.
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