152. 152W Rare clock painting with automata attributed to Xavier Tharin from the second half of the 19th century. A rare automaton picture clock attributed to Xavier Tharin, second half 19th century Depicting an idealised painted landscape with a seashore town and the countryside to the background, presenting various mechanical novelties, including moving boats, a train, a windmill and a fountain, the circular enamelled clock dial framed within the right hand side tower house, the musical mechanical movement activates hourly, and within a foliate carved glazed frame, 107cm wide, 31cm deep, 85cm high (42in wide, 12in deep, 33in high) Xavier Tharin is recorded working in Paris, circa 1860. The celebrated Anatole France describes a very similar mechanical painting clock from his childhood in his book "Le Livre de mon ami", published in 1855: "...the dining room is very peculiar because of a clock painting that represents a mountain by the sea with a church, under a blue sky. And when the hour strikes, a ship starts navigating on the waves, a locomotive with its carriages emerges out of a tunnel and an air balloon rises... It seems that the train, the ship and the balloon only departed every hour and that's a long time, an hour..."