Watches fitted with a carillon musical movement on five bells with five hammers are extremely rare, even more so when also fitted with an automaton scene.John RichFamous English maker and retailer. He used to work in London and Geneva from the end of the 18th century to circa 1825. He was specialised in automaton and skeleton watches and snuffboxes with music, singing bird boxes and scent bottles with built-in watch and carillon musical movement. He used to deal with Jaquet-Droz & Leschot and the Rochat Brothers. Often made for the Chinese Market, his production was always of high quality and highly decorated.Jean-Louis Richter (1766-1841)He learned his art under David-Etienne-Roux and Philippe-Samuel-Théodore Roux, becoming a most renowned enamel painter. His speciality was the painting of landscapes and particularly lake and marine scapes, often representing ships in a harbour or battles with fighting Men-of-War. He also painted portraits and hunting scenes. Although it may happen that his signature, in running hand-writing, appears on some of his work, more often than not his paintings are unsigned but can clearly be recogniseas being in his hand from the style and quality of the work. He applied his art principally to watch cases and snuffboxes and these were largely destined for the Chinese, Turkish, British and Italian markets.Richter, like other great enamel painters of the time, often found inspiration for his work from paintings or engravings by the artists then in fashion, such as Van der Myn (1684-1741), Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727-1785), John Francis Rigaud (1742-1820), John Hoffner (1748-1810) and Francesco Bartolozzi (1727-1815), or even from particularly famous scenes such as the ?Rape of Helen? from the engraving by Guido Reni (1575-1642), now in the Cabinet des Estampes, Paris.