Important Collector's Watches, Pocket...

Geneva, Nov 11, 2007

LOT 182

Palemon and Lavinia LeRoy, Swiss, No. 2115, movement attributed to Piguet & Meylan. Made for the Chinese market, circa 1825. Very fine and rare, musical and quarter-repeating, 18K gold, polychrome enamel and pearl-set, centerseconds pocket watch playing music on the hour or at will.

CHF 50,000 - 60,000

EUR 30,000 - 35,000 / USD 42,000 - 50,000

Sold: CHF 88,500

C. Four-body, bassine, the back with a finely painted on enamel scene depicting Lavinia receiving the letter, the bezels with two waves of azure and translucent red enamel set with graduated pearls, pearl-set pendant and bow, bolt on the band for start/stop of the music. Hinged gold cuvette decorated with blue and white champlevé enamel foliage, apertures for hand-setting, winding the music and going train. D. White enamel, radial Roman numerals, outer minute and seconds divisions with fifteen-minute Arabic numerals. Gilt fleur de lis hands. M. 50 mm., frosted gilt, standing barrels, cylinder escapement, three-arm gold balance, flat balance spring, polished steel endplate, index regulator, music with double-pinned disk and 20 blued steel tuned teeth playing on both sides, music/silence lever protruding from under the cuvette, repeating on gongs activated by depressing the pendant. Dial signed, movement numbered. Diam. 57 mm.


LOADING IMAGES
Click to full view
Image
Grading System
Grade: AA

Very good
Case: 3-51

Good
Movement: 3*

Good

Overhaul recommended, at buyer's expense
Dial: 3-01

Good

HANDS Original

Notes

This painting illustrates a story from James Thomson?s popular poems "The Seasons" dating from 1726?30. The rural lovers Palemon and Lavinia appear in Thomson?s "Autumn"; they are adapted from the Biblical story of Ruth and Boaz. Palemon, a gentleman, professes his love for the country girl Lavinia, in a harvest-time setting. Thomson?s sentimental fantasy of rural romance was particularly attractive to a generation brought up on the ideals of Sensibility. The poem that accompanies this scene is as follows:
And are thou then Acastos' dear remains? She whom my restless Gratitude has sought// So long in vain, O Heav'ns! the very frame The soften'd Image of my Noble Friend.