Maker: Jacques Nicolas Pierre François Dubuc
Date:
c. 1815
Medium:
Mercury gilded brass, iron, enameled metal
Size:
Depth: 5 3/4″
Width: 14 1/2″
Height: 19″

In 1815, French clockmaker Jacques Dubuc sent advertisements to Baltimore for this mantle clock, available in two sizes and featuring a “statue of the great Washington” fashioned after a popular print of the general heading to battle. The inscription, “First in War, First in Peace, First in the Hearts of his Countrymen,” champions George Washington as a Revolutionary War general, politician, and founding father of the United States. But this was only part of Washington’s identity. At Mount Vernon, his plantation south of Washington, D.C., the first president enslaved over 577 people in his lifetime. His political and military successes protected only the rights of free, white, land-holding men. After Washington’s death in 1799, commemorative objects and images were displayed by households that benefited from such racial and economic privilege.

Friends of the American Wing Fund BMA 1994.163

Seeing and Hearing This Clock with Former BMA Curator David Park Curry

Transcript

[Aaron Henkin] Here’s curator David Park Curry on this clock featuring America’s first President, George
Washington. The BMA owns two versions, so sometimes there might be another example on view.
[David Park Curry] Well, in the age of the cell phone, people don’t realize how important clocks were, what
high end luxury goods they remained well into the 19th century. What’s fun about this is that this is a French
clock made for the American market. We actually have a letter from the manufacturer. His name was
Dubuque, working in Paris.
Washington was so popular after his death that there were images circulating everywhere. People were
fascinated in Europe as well as in the United States with this sort of citizen king, a person who refused to
become a ruler in the European sense, and so he was a great international figure.
When you see something gilded with a hero and an eagle on it, you know you’re talking about a work of art
first and a timepiece second. This is an eight day windup clock, and if you look at the face, you can see two
holes. One would wind up the timekeeping mechanism, the other, the chime that would sound the hour. We
wound it up so you could hear what it sounded like in 1815 or so.