Important Watches
Important Watches
ACHILLE-HUBERT BENOÎT, À PARIS | A VERY RARE, FINE AND EARLY GOLD SPLIT-SECONDS CHRONOGRAPH WATCH CIRCA 1840, NO. 1252
This lot has been withdrawn
Lot Details
Description
ACHILLE-HUBERT BENOÎT, À PARIS
A VERY RARE, FINE AND EARLY GOLD SPLIT-SECONDS CHRONOGRAPH WATCH
CIRCA 1840, NO. 1252
• Movement: gilded movement, lever escapement, the lever's arm with dumb-bell shaped terminal recessed into the plate for banking, compensation balance, spiral spring with over-coil
• Dial: white enamel regulator-type dial, subsidiary dials below for hours and above for the split seconds with blued steel and gold hands, central blued steel sweeping minute hand, the split seconds operated via a button through the pendant, signed A. Benoit, No. 1252
• Case: 18ct gold case with polished covers, chronograph locking slide beside pendant, gold cuvette signed A. Benoit a Paris, No. 1252
diameter 50mm
The Sir David Salomons Collection
Vera Bryce Salomons
L.A. Mayer Museum, Jerusalem, inventory no. WA 11-70
George Daniels & Ohannes Markarian, Watches and Clocks in the Sir David Salomons Collection, 1980, pp. 200-201 [erroneously published as no. 1292], figs. 120-120b
This is an especially early example of split-seconds work. Joseph-Tadeux Winnerl and Thomas Prest are also known to have produced early examples of split-seconds work for watches. Winnerl invented a form of the mechanism in 1838 which he further improved in 1840. For an example by Winnerl (c.1840), see: Antiquorum Geneva, 14 November 1993, lot 218; for an example by Prest (hallmarked 1840), see: Sotheby's London, 2 July 2019, lot 101. The split seconds hands on the present watch are operated via the pusher to the pendant. Depressing the pusher once sets both hands running; upon the second depression the gold seconds hand is stopped and the blued steel hand continues; upon the third depression, both hands are stopped.
Achille-Hubert Benoît (1804-1895) was a significant figure in French precision watchmaking during the 19th century. He was trained by his father, Pierre, also a watchmaker who himself had worked for Breguet and of whose watches it has been said: "every screw was a masterpiece".1 Achille-Hubert became director of the Royal Clock and watchmaking workshops at Versailles. At the 1834 French Exposition, he received one of the highest awards for a constant force escapement and his company Benoît et Cie received further medals at the Expositions of 1839 and 1844.2 In 1848 Achille-Hubert became the first director of a new horological school at Cluses and it was during his tenure there that Benoît developed an escapement for a tourbillon (for an illustration, see: R. Meis, Das Tourbillon, p. 71, fig. Z109).
1 As related by Antoine Redier, biographer of Louis Perrelet, see: Phillip Arnott, Constant Force Chronometer, no. 1 attributed to Paul Garnier, Antiquarian Horology, No. 1, Vol. 33, September 2011, p. 55.
2 ibid p.69.