Claude Michel, called Clodion (1738-1814), “The Dance of Time: The Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock by Lepaute,” 1748, terra cotta, sculpture is 22 inches high, 41 total inches including base and clock.

Director Anne L. Poulet announced that following a recent meeting of the Board of Trustees, The Frick Collection made two significant additions to its holdings. This spring, the institution purchased a masterpiece both of sculpture and clockmaking, “The Dance of Time: Three Nymphs Supporting a Clock by Lepaute.”

At the same spring board meeting, the gift of a rare plaster statuette of “Diana the Huntress” by Jean-Antoine Houdon (1741-1828) was accepted from the distinguished collector Frederick R. Koch. Both objects are undergoing study and conservation this summer and will be placed on public view in the galleries of the museum in the fall.

The clock features a timepiece by the firm of clockmakers working for Kings Louis XV and XVI as well as a sculpture by Claude Michel, known as Clodion (1738-1814). In the Eighteenth Century, this object was recognized as one of the artist’s masterpieces in the terra cotta medium and one of Lepautes’ greatest creations.

The “Dance of Time” is also the only known Eighteenth Century clock that features terra cotta not as a sketch medium but as a finished sculpture. Created in 1788 for celebrated architect Alexandre-Theodore Brongniart, the object was also the first such clock designed by Lepaute for a glass globe and the only one in which the original glass survives.

“‘The Dance of Time’ is one of the most important acquisitions made by the institution in recent years and it is with great pleasure that we bring this work, in fact, back to The Frick Collection. It was shown here for the first time in a public presentation in 1984, when, as guest curator, I organized an exhibition on Clodion that featured this work as a centerpiece,” Poulet said.

Clodion executed this sculpture on the eve of the French Revolution when he was at the height of his maturity, popularity and fame. A contemporary of Houdon and Fragonard, Clodion was one of the most inventive and technically gifted sculptors of the second half of the Eighteenth Century. At age 21 he won the prestigious Prix de Rome and spent nine years in the eternal city (1761-71), part of them in the company of Houdon.

Clodion’s Roman sojourn was crucial to his formation as an artist. There he studied antique statuary and modern art conceiving the inimitable blend of classical lyricism and baroque grace that would be the hallmark of his mature sculptures, like “The Dance of Time.”

Clodion was largely responsible for introducing the terra cotta statuettes as an independent art form to Eighteenth Century France. Terra cottas by Clodion – along with other masterpieces in that quintessential Eighteenth Century medium by Pajou, Chinard and Boizot – have been a traditional presence within The Frick Collection. “The Dance of Time” is one of Clodion’s most seminal works, a creation that freed the artist to explore ever more spatially intricate compositions, such as The Frick Collection’s “Zephyrus and Flora” of 1799.

Objects intended as the focus of a room, like Clodion’s “Dance of Time,” were themselves often the result of a creative, collaborative effort. In this instance, Clodion must have worked closely with the family firm of Jean-Andre (1720-89) and Jean-Baptiste Lepaute (1727-1802). The founder of the firm, Jean-Andre Lepaute, was among the most important clockmakers in Eighteenth Century France.

The caryatid pendulum clock with rotating annular dial is the most characteristic and beautiful of the designs the Lepaute family created in collaboration with sculptors. Lepaute caryatid clocks were made from about 1770 to 1830, almost throughout the distinguished history of a firm that maintained its preeminent status as official clockmakers to kings, republicans, emperors and kings again. A selection of the finest caryatid clocks produced by the firm encompasses changes in artistic styles from cheerful rococo elegance to astringent neoclassical grace.

At 2 feet tall, the plaster statuette of Diana the Huntress is an exact reduction of the celebrated life-size composition Houdon designed in the 1770s for Duke Ernst II of Saxe-Gothe, a full-size terra cotta version of that was acquired by The Frick Collection in 1939.

Although many copies and reductions of “Diana the Huntress” were made well into the Nineteenth Century, only two small-scale plasters bear the wax seal of Houdon’s atelier, an indication that they were produced in the studio during the artist’s lifetime: one is in the Musee Lambinet, Versailles, and the other now enters the Frick’s holdings as the generous gift of Frederick R. Koch.

The Frick is at 1 East 70th Street. For information, 212-288-0700 or www.frick.org.