Swiss gold enamel verge watch with pink gold Breguet hands Circa 1790

€ 10.000 – 50.000    Sold € 12.400
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Pocket watch with glazed protective case
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A rare gold enamel verge watch with a painting attributed to Jean-Louis Richter in Genève, Switzerland, circa 1790. The glazed protective open faced gold enamel case of outstanding quality is set with Oriental pearls on both sides and has a painting on the back of exceptional quality. The white enamel dial has black Arabic quarter and hour numerals and pink gold Breguet hands. The numbered movement has a verge escapement.
Dial and movement signed.
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Diameter: 59 mm
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Signed:  Clary
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This is one of the finest known enamel pocket watches. It was sold at the “Important Watches Hong-Kong” auction in  2002, for circa € 48,000 and was originally part of the Collection ‘Marcel van Cauwenbergh’.
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Jean-Louis Richter
Jean-Louis Richter (1766-1841) was a painter active in Geneva’s ‘Fabrique’ from the 1780’s to the 1830’s. 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.
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Enamel chipped