English duplex made for the Chinese market Circa 1810-1820

Gold and enamel duplex watch by William Ilbery
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An English 18K yellow gold and enamel open faced duplex pocket watch with a special solid gold movement made for the Chinese market, circa 1810-1820.
A round-shaped consular case with scallop edges, the case back champlevé enamelled with a polychrome enamel scene showing children playing with a hoop after an English engraving, the enamel attributable to Jean-Louis Richter, Geneva. White enamel dial with radial Roman hours, an outer minutes track with Arabic fifteen-minute numerals, subsidiary seconds and filigree gold hands. Signed bridge movement, a going barrel overlaid with plates of solid red gold engraved in Chinese style with scrolled foliage, key wind, a gold train of wheels, duplex escapement, gilded brass monometallic balance with large segmental sliding weights and steel poising screw sand blued flat steel hairspring, diamond end-stone.
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Diameter: 59 mm
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Signed: Ilbery London
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Ilberys solid red gold movements. Only very few Ilbery watches with a solid red gold movement are known. This is the third movement known that is duly signed by Ilbery, London. All cased with paintings on enamel attributable to Jean-Louis Richter.
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William Ilbery, circa 1760-1839, was active in London from 1780 in Goswell Street, he moved to Duncan Terrace towards the end of the 18th century. After James Cox in London and Jaquet Droz in Switzerland, he also specialized in producing luxury watches for the Chinese market. His early production was very much in the English style, featuring a full plate movement and an English-type single-wheel duplex escapement. However, for his highest-quality watches, he incorporated a spring detent escapement. Later, the watch movements he produced were much inspired by the Lépine calibre with a free-standing barrel, as were Jaquet Droz’s Swiss production signed in London and that of William Anthony, who worked in London. The cases of his watches were sumptuously decorated by the best Genevan enamellers, such as Jean-Francois-Victor Dupont, who usually signed his work, and Jean-Louis Richter, who signed rarely. He organized the production in Switzerland, mainly in Fleurier, of profusely engraved movements for the Asian market. He was followed in this by makers such as Bovet and Juvet who also worked in Fleurier (Val de Travers). Ilbery can therefore be considered one of the most representative makers of ‘Chinese’ watches. He seems to have maintained close contacts with the continental trade since a watch signed ‘Ilbery Paris’ is known while Ilbery & Son are recorded in London and Fleurier, as well as in Canton.
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Children playing with a hoop. The charming painted enamel scene decorating the present watch derives from English genre paintings by artists from the Royal Academy, such as Joshua Reynolds (1723- 1792), Francis Wheatley (1747-1801), William Hamilton (1751-1801), William Redmore Bigg (1755-1828), etc., who specialized in images of romanticised English rural life in the last quarter of the 18th century. Their paintings were engraved by Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815), Thomas Burke (1749-1815), John Raphael Smith (1752-1812), Peltro William Tomkins (1760-1840), Henry Gillbank (late 18th-early 19th century), etc., and sold as prints which were published by John Boydell (1719-1804) and Josiah Boydell (1752-1817), engravers and print-sellers, James Daniell (1771-1814) and others. These genre prints were enormously popular and were used as models for Genevan enamellers, including Jean-Louis Richter (1766-1841).
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Jean-Louis Richter (1766-1841) was a painter active in Geneva’s ‘Fabrique’ from the 1780s to the 1830s. His work often unsigned, is clearly recognizable. He was the son of Jean Jost Richter who died in 1792, an engraver and ‘bourgeois’ of Frankfort on the Main, who became an inhabitant of Geneva on February 7, 1766. In 1778, at the age of 12, Richter began a six-year apprenticeship with the Roux brothers, who specialized in the decoration of watches and jewellery. In January 1793, ‘Rifter’ (sic) is listed among the citizens of Geneva who are to elect the new National Assembly, he is described as a painter. In 1820, Richter was elected to the Conseil of the city of Geneva, and in 1830, he was elected again. In addition to his painting on enamel, Richter also practised another genre, imported from Berlin and Brunswick: a painting on objects made of cardboard and of sheet iron. In 1826, Richter is recorded in the Almanach des adresses du canton de Genève as working “en l’Isle, No. 243”. Around 1815 he became associated with Aimé-Julien Troll (1781-1852). In 1828 they are listed as executing paintings “on enamel and in oils, landscapes, portraits, flowers, and all types of jewellery, Quai de l’Isle, 243”. The association between Troll and Richter had been dissolved by 1840. Jean-Louis Richter died in Geneva on July 21, 1841, at the age of nearly 75. Dr Hans Boeckh has shown that the work of Richter may be divided into three periods: in the earliest of them, the English influence is predominant, with subjects coming from the engravings of artists such as William Hamilton (1751-1801) and Peltro William Tomkins (1760-1840), although the influence of other artists can be perceived as well, contemporaries such as Johann Ludwig Aberli (1723-1786), Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815), Angelica Kauffmann (1741-1807) or painters from earlier times such as Guido Reni (1575-1642) and Eustache Lesueur (1616-1655). Richter’s second period was dominated by Italian landscapes, real or imaginary, in the style of Claude-Joseph Vernet (1714-1789). In his third period, Richter favoured Swiss landscapes, often after the work of Pierre-Louis De la Rive.