Jaeger LeCoultre Reverso Tribute Pays Tribute To Calude Monet

Jaeger-LeCoultre pays homage to Venice, host city of the Homo Faber Biennial exhibition, with three new limited-edition Reverso Tribute Enamel timepieces.

The case-back of each piece features a miniature reproduction of one of Claude Monet’s paintings of Venice, reaffirming the Reverso as an ideal canvas for artistic expression.

A Homage to Venice, Captured by the Great Impressionist Master, Claude Monet

Painted late in his career, Monet’s ‘Venice Series’ paintings exquisitely render the architecture and exceptional light of Venice that immediately captivated the artist when he and his wife arrived in La Serenissima in autumn 1908. At first declaring the city “too beautiful to paint”, Monet soon set to work, choosing a dozen different sites and painting them repeatedly at different times of day to capture the changing light. It was a prolific period: during his10-week stay, Monet painted 37 images.

Homo Faber’s mission to honour and promote craft in all of its forms closely mirrors Jaeger-LeCoultre’s commitment to support not only the craft skills of watchmaking but also the artistic crafts associated with Haute Horlogerie. With the new Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Venice Series’ timepieces, La Grande Maison showcases the talents and skills of the Manufacture’s in-house Métiers Rares™ (Rare Handcrafts) Atelier – bringing together the crafts of miniature painting, enamelling and guillochage – while paying tribute to the mission that it shares with Homo Faber.

The three dials, decorated with hand-guilloché patterns beneath translucent coloured enamel, are an eloquent artistic response to the miniature paintings on the case-backs. The enamelling alone requires eight or nine hours of work for each dial, with up to five layers of enamel and six or seven separate firings at up to 800°C. The final challenge is the faultless application of the indexes (requiring tiny holes to be drilled through the pristine enamel) and the transfer of the chemin de fer minutes register. The simplicity of the Reverso Tribute design codes – faceted appliqué hour-markers and Dauphine hands – places full value on the beauty of the decoration.

San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. Chosen as the setting for the Homo Faber Biennial, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, opposite St Mark’s Square, captivated Monet. In this view, painted as the sun set behind the island, the emphasis is on light, colours and reflections, reducing the buildings to a silhouette that anchors the composition. The miniaturised reproduction of Monet’s celebrated painting required approximately 40 hours of meticulous work. The dial features grand feu enamel in a shade of blue that perfectly complements the colours of the sky on the case-back painting. Echoing the geometric lines of the Reverso’s Art Deco design, the herringbone guilloché pattern comprises 120 separate lines, each of which requires three passages of the lathe, making 360 lines altogether – a meticulous task that takes eight hours to complete.

The Grand Canal Venice. With a remarkable sense of depth and movement, this spellbinding view across the Grand Canal was painted in the afternoon. The church of Santa Maria della Salute appears to be floating on the water, its architectural details sublimated to the effect of the hazy light. The case-back that faithfully reproduces this masterwork required almost 70 hours of enamelling work. The wavy hand-guilloché pattern on the dial – which took five hours of meticulous work to create – repeats the reflections on the water’s surface depicted in Monet’s painting. The visual effect of the waves is amplified by layers of translucent grand feu enamel in a soft shade of green that matches the water.

The Doge’s Palace. Painted from a gondola in the middle of Grand Canal at 8.00am, this view of the Doge’s Palace beautifully evokes the effect of morning light on the water. “The palace…was just an excuse for painting the atmosphere,” Monet wrote to a friend. To reproduce the shimmering beauty of this painting, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s enameller worked for almost 60 hours in total. On the dial, the lozenge guilloché pattern creates constantly changing effects of light and shade as it is turned at different angles, echoing Monet’s fascination with the effect of light on water at different times of day. Amplified by rich layers of translucent blue grand feu enamel, the geometric pattern comprises 981 lines, each of which requires five passages of the lathe. With a total of 4,905 passages of hand-operated lathe altogether, this highly skilled work takes eight hours to complete.

Offered in a limited edition of 10 pieces each, the Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Venice Series’ is a fine tribute to the city that hosts the Homo Faber Biennial and a superb marriage of fine watchmaking with the decorative crafts of guillochage, enamelling and miniature painting.

Technical Specifications:

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL ‘VENICE SERIES’ – SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE

Case: 18-karat white gold (750/1000)

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually-wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Herringbone guilloché, Grand Feu enamel

Case-back: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334M4