French 18 carat gold Louis XV verge pocket watch Circa 1760

Gold and enamel verge by Julien Le Roy
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A fine french 18K gold and enamel open faced verge pocket watch, circa 1760. A Louis XV case, the back painted with a country scene in the manner of Antoine Watteau depicting a young man courting a lady, her black servant handing her a letter, the interior decorated with a bouquet of flowers, the band painted with a continuous landscape.

White enamel dial, radial Roman hours, outer minute track with five-minute Arabic numerals, a winding aperture between 3 and 4 o’clock, gold Louis XV hands. A hinged gilt-brass full plate movement, pentagonal baluster pillars, fusee and chain, verge escapement, micrometric potence adjustment, plain brass three-arm balance, flat balance spring, continental cock, silver regulator disc. Movement signed.
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Diameter: 44 mm
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Signed: Julien Le Roy Paris
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Julien Le Roy is one of the clockmakers who contributed most to the progress and the reputation of French watch- and clockmaking. Born in Tours on August 6, 1686, and died in 1759 in Paris. He came to Paris in 1699. In 1713 he achieved his master’s degree and in the following years, he became a jury member of the Paris Guild of Watchmakers. Later, Le Roy became director of the Société des Arts de Genève and, in 1739, Court Watchmaker (French Horloger Ordinaire du Roi) under Louis XV, he had his private quarters in the Louvre. He improved almost all branches of clockmaking and many important inventions in the realm of time measurement are owed to him. In 1717, Julien Le Roy presented an equation clock to the Royal Academy of Sciences which showed the true time, the place of the sun and its decline. His most important discoveries concerned watch mechanisms. The adjustable ‘potence’ for the verge escape wheel considerably improved the escapement’s functioning and the steel end-piece (coqueret) which allowed oil to be retained in the balance pivots in order to diminish frictional force, was quickly adopted by other watchmakers. He was the inventor of dumb repeating watches too, in 1740, he created a new arrangement that allowed the area allotted to the repeating work to be enlarged. This invention, called ‘à bâte levée’, was also adopted by his fellow clockmakers. In 1755 he invented a small anchor escapement used as a regulator for the repeating train. He contributed to the Encyclopédie by writing several articles on clockmaking together with his son Jean-Baptiste, the Academician. Le Roy ran his workshop in the Rue de Harlay in Paris until his death. Examples of his timepieces can be found in various important museums around the world, such as the Louvre and the Victoria and Albert Museum.
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Jean Antoine Watteau, better known as Antoine Watteau, was born in Valencijn on October 10, 1684, and died in Nogent-sur-Marne on July 18, 1721. He was a French painter of the rococo period. Watteau’s place of birth was conquered by the French in 1678.