22’’’ gilded movement, lever escapement, dual mainspring barrels, five wheel train, wolf’s tooth winding, steel lever with inset ruby pallets, brass escape wheel with upright teeth, two-arm bi-metallic chronometer-style balance with sliding curved trapezoid weights, four mean-time screws, steel balance spring with Breguet overcoil, both pivots with parachute suspension, large platinum broad crescent-shaped perpétuelle weight mounted to the backplate and buffering off two long springs mounted to the edge of the movement, single hammer quarter repeating à toc, movement side beneath VII o’clock with perpétuelle weight locking slide engraved M/A for Marche/Arret, further slide beneath IIII o’clock for regulation, movement edge signed and numbered Breguet No. 2926

silver engine-turned dial, clous-de-Paris guilloché centre, twin satin finished chapter rings with black Roman numerals and pearled minutes, fan-form sector for state of wind indication calibrated for 60 hours, subsidiary seconds at 6 o’clock, each with damier patterned engine-turning, crémaillère borders, satin finished angled cartouche beneath VI signed Breguet et Fils

gold collier-form case, the back and band engine-turned à grains d’orge, small monogrammed cartouche to centre, plain ring pendant with quarter-turn piston repeat, additional later glazed case back

Measurements

diameter 51mm

depth 19.5mm (with glazed back)

weight 138.2g (with glazed back)

Accompaniments

with a Breguet 250th anniversary certificate

Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard, French Banker, 1816.

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Baron Sandberg C.B.E.

Antiquorum Geneva, The Sandberg Watch Collection, 31 March – 1 April 2001, lot 184.

Christie’s Geneva, 16 May 2016, lot 125.

Camerer Cuss, Terence, The Sandberg Watch Collection, 1998, Geneva: Antiquorum, pp. 172-173, cat. 115.

On his return to France from exile in Switzerland, Breguet recognised the increasing importance of the new banking elite and focused his attention on courting this new trend-setting social stratum. Between 1798 and 1809, Breguet sold around 60 watches to prominent bankers.1 A slight pause brought about by the political uncertainties of the period followed, as years of war, occupation, and reparations encouraged a more measured expression of wealth in French society, before the bankers returned as major purchasers again from 1815.2

Among the most influential of Breguet’s banking clients was Gabriel-Julien Ouvrard (1770–1846), a financier whose career spanned the Revolutionary, Napoleonic, and Restoration eras. In addition to the perpétuelle offered here, Ouvrard had acquired a ruby cylinder repeating watch from Breguet in 1801 (no. 680). Born in the Vendée, the son of a paper-mill owner, he entered trade in Nantes as a young man and rose with extraordinary speed through naval and military supply contracts. By the close of the Directory he was at the centre of some of the largest financial operations in France, closely tied to the Bank of France and the Compagnie des Négociants Réunis, and by the early 19th century was counted among the wealthiest men in Europe. His fortunes, however, faltered under Napoleon: imprisoned for debt in 1809 and further compromised by involvement in clandestine peace negotiations with England, he spent the later years of the Empire in political disgrace and financial difficulty.

The Restoration brought a return to influence. In 1816, acting as an adviser to Prime Minister the duc de Richelieu, Ouvrard helped to secure a 100-million-franc annuity that allowed France to meet reparations and accelerated the withdrawal of occupying troops. In that same year he purchased the present watch - a Breguet perpétuelle, at the time one of the most expensive and prestigious models offered by the firm – as well as the Château de la Chaussée at Bougival, a distinguished estate on the outskirts of Paris that gave architectural expression to his recovered prestige.

Although subsequent overextension in foreign ventures led to scandal, bankruptcy, and renewed imprisonment, Ouvrard remained a figure of lasting consequence. He died in London in 1846.

1 Breguet, Emmanuel, Breguet Watchmakers since 1775, Revised and Expanded Edition, Swan Éditeur, 2016, pp. 185-186.

2 Ibid.