History: This watch was bought by Mr. Casa-Valencia for the account of the King of Prussia. For biography, see lot 29. As opposed to watches with regular dead independent seconds mechanism, as invented by Moise Pouzait, with independent train and flirt on the escape wheel pinion, the watches with secondes d'un coup, were invented by Breguet to avoid the subsidiary tr ain of wheels. In this watch, the secondes d 'un coup mechanism, was specially devised to beat 76 times a minute, instead of 60, in order to be used to punctuate military marches. Specially designed by Breguet for his precision time-keepers with tourbillon regulator, the "echappement naturel" is hard to be found on other watches, even more so when, such as in this example, the watch is set with the clead seconds mechanism so called "secondes d'un coup. With the double calendar and the thermometer, this movement is of exceptional interest and almost unique in the work of Breguet. The case and the dial of this exceptional watch were made at the request of Gustave Loup the celebrated watch collector, to be presented to Kind Fouad of Egypt. Gustave Loup was born in Tien-tsin, China. His father, Pierre Loup (1840-1899), had left the Val-de-Travers, in the Swiss Canton of Neuchatel, in 1859 bound for Hong Kong and in 1881 had purchased the Maison L. Vrard of Tien-tsin and Peking, which among other makers, represented the Maison Bovet until 1894. Gustave Loup's life was always very much divided between China and Switzerland and he enjoyed studying Chinese Art as much as he loved collecting watches. As a boy, he collected stamps and butterflies and in 1902 he began to collect enamelled watches, snuffboxes and clocks. Having been trained as a watchmaker and jeweler, and gifted with an excellent visual memory, he was perfectly equipped for his quest of the right piece that would enrich his collection. He became a passionate collector, taking great care in restoring his pieces to their original state. It is with him that many watches and clocks, produced years before in Switzerland, France or England for China, found their way back to Europe. His exceptional collection was exhibited in December 1914 in Geneva at the Musee des Arts Decoratifs. Since then the Loup Collection was shown various times in Geneva such as in 1920 at the Exposition retrospective de la Foire d'Horlogerie, and again in 1934 at the Athenee for the Xe assemblee de la Societe suisse do chronometric. The Loup Collection was also exhibited in La Chauxde- Fonds at the Salons d 'horlogeric in 1932 and 1933. Gustave Loup returned to China on two occasions, 1922-1925 and 1928-1930, constantly adding to his collection. Although he had a particular fascination for watches and clocks, he was also very much interested by many other objects such as Chinese art and archeology, coins, and Chinese proverbs represented by symbolic i mages on porcelain objects. I-Iis reputation was such that in 1923 he was offered the post of curator of the Palace Museum in Peking. The Chinese were keen to have a European curator who spoke mandarin but he declined the offer on that occasion and again a few years later. When Alfred Chapuis was writing his famous work on Chinese watches, La Montre C/ainoise (Neuchatel, Attinger Freres, Editeurs), Loup advised him and brought him much valuable information and documentation. Chapuis named Gustave Loup as collaborator in the title page of his book.