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OUEST ENCHERES PUBLIQUES NANTES & RENNES

416 - Lépine, watchmaker to the Empress.
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Estimate €20,000 - €30,000
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Description
Lépine, watchmaker to the Empress. Precision desk regulator with a complete astronomical calendar and annual date display, featuring a grid-compensated balance wheel housed in a mahogany cage case, with moulded mahogany veneer (with some missing sections and wear) adorned with chiselled and gilded bronze ornaments (showing wear). The pilaster-style uprights are crowned with Egyptian capitals, renown motifs and palmette friezes centred on a fleur-de-lis. It encloses a large central white enamelled dial with black Roman numerals, signed ‘Lépine Hr de l’Impératrice’, with blued steel and gilded brass Breguet hands indicating the hours, the minutes and seconds, as well as two subsidiary dials situated in the lower section: the one on the left (hair) indicating the phases and age of the moon as well as the day, and the one on the right, the date, month and year (additional or modified hand). Empire period, circa 1805–1809. Height: 48 cm – Width: 31 cm – Depth: 20 cm With its key Appraisal carried out by Mr Cédric HENON. Similar cases can be found on several precision desk regulators dating from as early as 1799; of particular note are: -The Spanish Royal Collection, signed Jean-Simon Bourdier, see Roberts. -Versailles auction, Palais des Congrès, 19 November 1989, lot 94. -Picard auction, Paris, see Kjellberg. -Cristobal Balenciaga Collection, signed by Pierre-Basile Lepaute, Sotheby’s Monaco, 4 December 1983, lot 64. All these regulators, like our own, feature a high level of complications. Our regulator belongs to the select group of precision desk regulators with a full astronomical calendar produced in Paris at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries. Combining the display of hours, minutes and seconds, the phases and age of the moon, the day, the date, the month and the year, it bears witness to a particularly ambitious endeavour in horology. The presence of a grid-type compensating balance, designed to correct for thermal variations, further reinforces its scientific nature and its primary purpose as a high-precision timekeeping instrument. The signature ‘Lépine, Horloger de l’Impératrice’ is of particular historical interest. Used for a relatively brief period, between 1805 and 1809, it provides a valuable means of dating and links our regulator to the most prestigious years of the First Empire. Under the direction of Pierre-Claude Raguet, known as Lépine, the firm served an elite clientele comprising imperial dignitaries and those close to Empress Joséphine. This regulator perfectly illustrates the level of excellence achieved by the workshop at that time, both in terms of the sophistication of its movement and the quality of its craftsmanship. Biography: Jean-Antoine Lépine (1720–1814), a leading figure in 18th-century Parisian watchmaking, was admitted as a master watchmaker in Paris on 12 March 1762, and as watchmaker to the King around 1765–1766, under Louis XV and later Louis XVI, he was renowned for his fundamental innovations, in particular the calibre known as the ‘Lépine’. Towards the end of the 18th century, the day-to-day management of his workshop was taken over by his son-in-law and business partner Pierre-Claude Raguet, known as Lépine (1753–1810), who continued the business under the trade name ‘Lépine à Paris’. During the First Empire, the House of Lépine was associated with the court’s high-ranking clientele and held the prestigious title of “Watchmaker to the Empress”, used between 1805 and 1809. Maison Lépine, headed by Raguet-Lépine, supplied high-precision timepieces to dignitaries of the Empire and the circle of Empress Joséphine. The pieces produced during this period are distinguished by their scientific rigour: highly stable precision movements, high-quality enamelled dials, and architecturally designed cases in mahogany and gilded bronze. Bibliography: -Derek Roberts, *Precision Pendulum Clocks*, 2004, p. 77, pl. 29-13 and p. 99, pl. 31-14B. -Kjellberg, Pierre, Encyclopédie de la pendule française du Moyen Age au XXe siècle, 1997, pp. 375 and 514. -Augarde, Jean-Dominique, Les Ouvriers du Temps, 1996, p. 354. -Chapiro, Adolphe, *Jean-Antoine Lépine (1720–1814)*. -Tardy, *Dictionary of French Clockmakers*, 1971–1972. Lot from a voluntary sale.
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About the sale Quintessence IV – Part 2: Furniture & Works of Art
Auction location
Auction time 10/17/2026 at 2:00 PM
Pictures credits: Contact the Auction House
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