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拍品專文
The richly decorated enamelled gold outer case depicts The Three Graces Distressing Cupid, after Angelica Kauffman, R.A., which was executed circa 1776, and is surmounted by the Walpole crest - a bearded male head in profile, ducally crowned and wearing a long, tasselled cap charged with a Catherine wheel. Given the dating of the case, the most plausible candidates are Sir Edward Walpole (1706–1784) or his younger brother, Horatio Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford (1717–1797), better known as Horace.
Horace Walpole - author, antiquarian, and one of the most influential arbiters of taste in 18th-century England - was a pioneering figure in the development of historicist collecting. He is best known for his villa at Strawberry Hill, his ‘little Gothic castle’ on the banks of the Thames at fashionable Twickenham, where he assembled a celebrated collection of works of art, objects of virtu, and historical relics.
The subject of the enamel scene reflects the widespread dissemination of Kauffman’s neoclassical compositions through prints, notably those by the English engraver and publisher William Wynne Ryland (1733–1783), and their adaptation within the decorative arts in the later 18th century. A Swiss-born painter and founding member of the Royal Academy, Kauffman was championed by Walpole’s close friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, while Walpole himself particularly admired her portraiture.
Interestingly, Sir Edward Walpole’s three daughters by Dorothy Clement - Laura, Maria, and Charlotte - were all born between about 1735 and 1742, and it is therefore conceivable that Horace may have commissioned the watch for his brother. His close involvement with the family is well documented. In 1780, he commissioned Reynolds to paint the celebrated triple portrait The Ladies Waldegrave, depicting his three grandnieces, the daughters of Maria Walpole and James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave. Walpole had initially requested that Reynolds represent them as the Three Graces for Strawberry Hill, but the artist instead chose to portray them engaged in domestic craftmaking. It is clear Horace was a devoted great-uncle, even attending Maria’s wedding as a witness alongside his brother, and the Reynolds commission provides a compelling parallel at a date close to the manufacture of the present watch case.
It was quite a common practice to recase an earlier fine movement by a revered maker. Benjamin Gray was a distinguished clockmaker who established his business in Pall Mall in 1727 before moving in 1738 to St James’s Street West at the Sun Dial in Thatched House Court. On 30 March 1742 he was appointed Watchmaker in Ordinary to King George II, with a yearly stipend of £100. In 1743 he entered into partnership with the young Swiss clockmaker Justin Vulliamy, then aged 31, inaugurating a celebrated dynasty of royal clockmakers that endured into the mid-19th century. Although the present watch does not appear in the 1774 inventory of Strawberry Hill, nor in the subsequent 1842 sale catalogue, Horace Walpole is known to have owned at least one watch by Benjamin Gray - famously stolen from him by highwaymen in Hyde Park in November 1759. In a letter of June 1749 to Horace Mann, he names Gray, alongside John Ellicott, among the finest watchmakers in London.
Christie’s would like to thank Dr. Silvia Davoli for her generous assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.
Horace Walpole - author, antiquarian, and one of the most influential arbiters of taste in 18th-century England - was a pioneering figure in the development of historicist collecting. He is best known for his villa at Strawberry Hill, his ‘little Gothic castle’ on the banks of the Thames at fashionable Twickenham, where he assembled a celebrated collection of works of art, objects of virtu, and historical relics.
The subject of the enamel scene reflects the widespread dissemination of Kauffman’s neoclassical compositions through prints, notably those by the English engraver and publisher William Wynne Ryland (1733–1783), and their adaptation within the decorative arts in the later 18th century. A Swiss-born painter and founding member of the Royal Academy, Kauffman was championed by Walpole’s close friend Sir Joshua Reynolds, while Walpole himself particularly admired her portraiture.
Interestingly, Sir Edward Walpole’s three daughters by Dorothy Clement - Laura, Maria, and Charlotte - were all born between about 1735 and 1742, and it is therefore conceivable that Horace may have commissioned the watch for his brother. His close involvement with the family is well documented. In 1780, he commissioned Reynolds to paint the celebrated triple portrait The Ladies Waldegrave, depicting his three grandnieces, the daughters of Maria Walpole and James Waldegrave, 2nd Earl Waldegrave. Walpole had initially requested that Reynolds represent them as the Three Graces for Strawberry Hill, but the artist instead chose to portray them engaged in domestic craftmaking. It is clear Horace was a devoted great-uncle, even attending Maria’s wedding as a witness alongside his brother, and the Reynolds commission provides a compelling parallel at a date close to the manufacture of the present watch case.
It was quite a common practice to recase an earlier fine movement by a revered maker. Benjamin Gray was a distinguished clockmaker who established his business in Pall Mall in 1727 before moving in 1738 to St James’s Street West at the Sun Dial in Thatched House Court. On 30 March 1742 he was appointed Watchmaker in Ordinary to King George II, with a yearly stipend of £100. In 1743 he entered into partnership with the young Swiss clockmaker Justin Vulliamy, then aged 31, inaugurating a celebrated dynasty of royal clockmakers that endured into the mid-19th century. Although the present watch does not appear in the 1774 inventory of Strawberry Hill, nor in the subsequent 1842 sale catalogue, Horace Walpole is known to have owned at least one watch by Benjamin Gray - famously stolen from him by highwaymen in Hyde Park in November 1759. In a letter of June 1749 to Horace Mann, he names Gray, alongside John Ellicott, among the finest watchmakers in London.
Christie’s would like to thank Dr. Silvia Davoli for her generous assistance in the preparation of this catalogue entry.