Allegory of Painting

Enamel watches like this belonged to a particular moment in Geneva. In the years around 1800 the city's workshops were turning out cased watches whose backs were small paintings, sold across Europe and beyond to buyers who wanted a picture as much as a timepiece. This is one of them, and the picture is a good one.

The subject is an allegory of Painting. A young woman sits with an oval tablet across her lap, drawing a portrait onto it, while a second figure leans in at her shoulder. They are placed beneath a canopy of blue drapery drawn back with tasselled curtains, and the whole scene is built up in coloured enamels over a translucent guilloche ground, so the blue behind the figures shifts as it catches the light. Gold foil is worked into the tassels and a line of white enamel beads runs round the edge like a string of pearls. The faces carry real expression, which is the part that separates a painted watch that still holds the eye from one that was decoration by the yard.

It is a watch made to be looked at from the front as well. The bezel around the glass is set with a continuous row of paste, and the hour and minute hands are pierced silver set to match, so the front glitters where the back is painted. The dial is white enamel with black Arabic numerals and the signature Trolliet in fine script above the six, wound and set through the dial by key in the manner of the period.

What sets this particular example apart is that it has survived complete. The paste is all present in the bezel and the hands, the painted scene is unbroken across the faces, and the movement inside still runs. Geneva produced these in numbers, but the plainer floral backs are what usually turn up now. A figural scene painted to this level, still whole and still going, is the harder thing to find.

The marks, the movement and the full condition are set out in the drawers below.