97th Auction

2018/5/12

Lot 231

Julien Le Roy à Paris, Case No. 1273, 53 mm, 116 g, circa 1750
A very fine gold enamel quarter repeating verge pocket watch, studded with half pearls for the Ottoman market
Case: gold enamel, winding hole with locking device, rear bell, signed movement protection cap. Dial: enamel. Movm.: full plate movement, chain/fusee, 2 hammers, three-arm brass balance.
The partly open-work band of this marvellous case with a pearl-set bezel is decorated with a wave-like pattern with opaque light blue and translucent red and blue Champlevé enamel. The back of the case shows an exquisite enamel medallion in a frame of split pearls: opaque polychrome painting of the Sultan Ahmed Mosque in Constantinople, today’s Istanbul. In the foreground is a shore area with boats, the background shows a mountain range against the azure sky.
Julien Le Roy (1686 -1759) was one of the most outstanding clock- and watchmakers of his time and certainly played a decisive part in establishing the leading role French clockmaking had in the 18th century. He was born in Tours, and was trained under his father Pierre Le Roy. In 1699 Julien Le Roy went to Paris where he served his apprenticeship under Le Bon. He became a master in 1713, presented an equation clock to the Académie Royale des Sciences in 1717, and was appointed clockmaker to the king in 1739 (with his own rooms at the Louvre). Le Roy invented the adjustable bracket for the verge escapement wheel ("potence"), the repetition strike on springs instead of bells for pocket watches, and the "all-or-nothing" piece for repeating watches. His inventions and improvements were of such extreme importance that most watchmakers adopted them promptly for their own pieces. Later Le Roy was director of the Société des Arts; he and his son supplied the entries on watches and clocks in the encyclopaedia compiled by Diderot and d'Alembert.
Julien Le Roy’s work can be found among the world’s greatest collections including the Musées du Louvre, Cognacq-Jay, Jacquemart-André and the Petit Palais in Paris. Other examples are housed in the Château de Versailles, the Victoria and Albert Museum and Guildhall in London, Waddesdon Manor, Buckinghamshire, the Musée d’Horlogerie in La Chaux-de-Fonds, the Museum der Zeitmessung Beyer, Zurich, the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, the Musées Royaux d’Art et d’Histoire in Brussels, the Museum für Kunsthandwerck, Dresden, the National Museum in Stockholm, the Musea Nacional de Arte Antigua, Lisbon, the J. P. Getty Museum in California; the Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore and the Detroit Institute of Art.

estimated
26.00030.000 €
Price realized
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