Jaeger-LeCoultre | Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures

Marking 90 years since the birth of Reverso, Jaeger-LeCoultre introduces a trio of watches that celebrates the work of three great masters from the dawn of Modern Art: Gustave Courbet, Vincent Van Gogh and Gustav Klimt. The new timepieces also unite three distinct artisanal skills practised within the Manufacture.

The Reverso Tribute collection is closest in its stylistic details to the 1930s originals, and in these three new watches, the signature simplicity of their dials enhances the subtle beauty of the guilloché backgrounds. The colour of each dial – a different shade of misty blue or green – hints at the colours of the enamelled treasures hidden on the reverse side, while the restrained design contrasts with the richness and detail of the miniature works of art.

The three paintings reproduced in the timepieces triptych represent three markers of a major watershed in the Western artistic tradition, from the 19th-century Realism of Courbet, to Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionism, to the expressive and experimental spirit of Klimt and the Viennese Secession. To honour the Reverso’s unique ability to hide or reveal the artistic treasure created on its reverse side, the Manufacture’s researchers identified three beautiful paintings that had been hidden from the world for many decades – assumed to have been lost for ever until rediscovered and authenticated in recent years.

Gustave Courbet – View of Lake Léman (1876)
A leader of the 19th-century Realist movement and a political activist, Gustave Courbet fled his native France in 1873, settling near Vevey on the northern shore of Switzerland’s Lake Léman (Lake Geneva), where he was inspired by the constantly changing views across the water to the Dents du Midi mountains. In this beautifully atmospheric view of the lake, painted in the last year of his life, Courbet has captured the movement of clouds and sunlight on the lake’s surface in luminous tones of silvery blue.

In the early 1890s, about 15 years after Courbet’s death, a resident of the town of Granville in Normandy bequeathed this painting, along with two others also attributed to Courbet, to the local art museum – the Musée du Vieux Granville. At the end of World War II, they were moved into a storage locker, where they lay forgotten for 70 years. In 1995, an expert declared that all three paintings were fakes – either intentional forgeries, or misattributed. The paintings came to light again only in 2015, when the museum’s curator was preparing a document about the history of the museum. She decided to seek a second opinion about their authenticity and consulted the leading Courbet expert Bruno Mottin, of Musées de France. After extensive research, Mottin confirmed in 2017 that the lake scene was, indeed, by Courbet.

Reproducing a major portion of the work for the Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s master enameller has perfectly captured the delicate colour palette, fine details and evocative atmosphere of the original. The soft tones of the painting are superbly complemented by the gleaming white gold case, and by the subtle herringbone guilloché texture of the misty grey-blue dial.

Vincent Van Gogh – Sunset at Montmajour (1888)
When Van Gogh moved to the South of France in 1888, it marked the beginning of a highly productive period of artistic maturity, as he attempted to portray both nature and the man-made environment in new ways.

On July 5th 1888, Van Gogh wrote to his younger brother Theo: “Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill, and wheat fields… The sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground… I brought back a study of it too...” Despite this clear evidence, the painting Van Gogh described, Sunset at Montmajour, was not authenticated as genuine until 2013. In the interim, it had disappeared completely for 60 years, briefly re-emerged, then vanished again.

In 1908, a Norwegian industrialist and collector, Cristian Nicolai Mustad, bought the painting through a Paris dealer. Soon afterwards, according to family lore, the French Ambassador to Sweden, an acquaintance of Mustad with some expertise in 19th-century art, dismissed it as a fake. Upset and embarrassed, Mustad immediately banished the picture to his attic, where it remained, forgotten, until after his death in 1970. Again rejected as a fake, it again disappeared, then reappeared briefly in 1991, when another attempt at authentication – by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam – also denied the artist’s paternity of this work. Finally, in 2011, the Museum’s experts agreed to examine the painting again, using the advanced techniques now available. Among them, chemical tests proved that the pigments matched those on Van Gogh’s palette from Arles. Two years later, in September 2013, it was declared genuine – the first full-sized painting by Van Gogh to be newly authenticated since 1928.

Jaeger-LeCoultre’s master enameller faithfully reproduces the strong sense of perspective of the original, as well as the effect of the artist’s characteristic brush strokes and heavy impasto. The distinctive shade of green enamel chosen for the sunray-guilloché dial provides an elegant counterpoint to the rich gold and russet tones of the painting.

Gustav Klimt – Portrait of a Lady (1917)
Not only is this the sole known “double” portrait by the Viennese artist, it is the only “twice lost” one.

The painting’s double identity was discovered only in 1996, when a sharp-eyed art student, Claudia Maga, discovered that Klimt had painted it over an earlier portrait, which had been believed lost since 1912, soon after he painted it. The story behind it is deeply romantic: the earlier portrait was of a young woman with whom Klimt had fallen madly in love. She became his muse, then died prematurely. In the last year of his own life, still grieving his loss, Klimt covered the original portrait with a new painting, of a different lady.

In February 1997, during preparations for a special exhibition, the work was stolen from the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza, Italy, where it had hung since 1925, when the eponymous collector, Giuseppe Ricci Oddi bought it. The frame was discarded on the gallery’s roof, suggesting that thieves had taken the painting out through the skylight. However, this was a decoy, since the opening was too small for the frame to fit through. In the years that followed, fakes appeared at various times (including one intercepted at the French border, in a package addressed to former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi) but the original was assumed to be gone for good.

Then, in December 2019, gardeners clearing ivy from an outside wall of the gallery stumbled on a metal panel. Behind it, they found a black rubbish bag containing the missing painting. Experts were quickly able to confirm its authenticity.

The story becomes even stranger: according to testimony given by the thief in return for immunity from prosecution, the painting stolen in 1997 was, in fact, a fake, hung in place of the original, which had already been stolen several months earlier, in a carefully planned inside job. The copy was then stolen to hide the fact that it was a fake, which would have been spotted by experts visiting the exhibition, thus incriminating the accomplice inside the gallery. That leaves the question of how the original came to be hidden in the wall. Judging from its relatively good condition, it could not have been there since it was stolen. So who returned it? When? And why? The mystery remains.

Reproduced in miniature on the case back of the Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures, Portrait of a Lady captures the same dreamy quality that Klimt had created. The subject’s elegant pose and fashionable outfit are reproduced in perfect detail, and the green tones of the background create an illusion of depth, just as in the original. The green dial, decorated with grand feu enamel over a fine barleycorn guilloché pattern, beautifully evokes the luminescent quality of the portrait’s background.

Enamelling, a rich tradition at Jaeger-LeCoultre
The art of enamelling has a long history at La Grande Maison, dating back to the pocket watches of the 1890s. The first known Reverso with an enamelled case back is a model commissioned by a client in 1936, featuring a delicately detailed portrait of a woman who is thought to be a Maharani on the reverse side.

Having established its own in-house enamelling atelier in the 1990s – to this day, one of the very few Manufactures to have done so – Jaeger-LeCoultre began in 1996 to reproduce the works of major artists from Europe and Asia on the tiny scale of the Reverso case back.

To reproduce a painting in enamel on the case back of a watch presents several challenges. The enameller’s skill as a draftsman must not only be equal to that of the original artist but must also be reduced to a tiny scale. What’s more, colour must be controlled so as to exactly match the original work of art – and yet, the nature of enamel pigment means that the outcome after firing cannot be exactly predicted. It is a question of the artisan’s judgement, based on many years of experience.

The Courbet and Van Gogh works reproduced for the Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures pose a particular challenge: both artists used a heavy impasto, whereby paint is applied so thickly that it is raised above the surface of the canvas. Because this technique of course cannot be duplicated with enamel, the enamellist had to create an illusion of the technique. On the other hand, the luminescent quality of grand feu enamel gives it a particular advantage over oil on canvas: tilting an enamelled surface to catch the light reveals unexpected depth and nuances.