• Homage to La Serenissima: the beauty and shimmering light of Venice, as captured by J.M.W. Turner, one of the greatest landscape painters in Western art history

• Showcasing the Métiers Rares™: uniting the crafts of miniature painting, enamelling, paillonage and hand-guillochage

• Intricate enamelling: a complex process requiring 14 layers of enamel to recreate the sense of depth and perspective, the limpid light and the floating effect of the clouds

• An exclusive production: four Reverso Tribute Enamel timepieces, each issued in a limited edition of only 10 pieces each

Venice, La Serenissima. Renowned for its extraordinary light and beauty, the city has inspired generations of artists throughout the centuries. Among them was J.M.W. Turner, who found in Venice an inexhaustible source of inspiration. His luminous interpretations of the city not only captured its unique atmosphere but also helped shape the course of landscape painting in Western art.

This September, coinciding with its participation in the Homo Faber Biennale in Venice, Jaeger-LeCoultre pays tribute to the host city with four new limited-edition Reverso Tribute Enamel timepieces. The caseback of each watch features a miniature reproduction of one of J.M.W. Turner’s paintings of La Serenissima, reaffirming Reverso’s role as a canvas for artistic expression.

EXPRESSING A VISION OF ART AND CULTURE

Beginning in Europe and now extending worldwide, Homo Faber was created to honour and promote excellence in craft in all its forms. This aligns closely with Jaeger-LeCoultre’s commitment to supporting not only the highly specialised technical crafts inherent to watchmaking but also the artistic crafts associated with Haute Horlogerie. Expressing Jaeger-LeCoultre’s vision of art and culture, the new Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Turner Series’ pays homage to this shared mission while showcasing the talents and skills of the Manufacture’s in-house Métiers Rares™ atelier.

Turner, a pioneer of modern art: Born in London in 1775, Joseph Mallord William Turner is acknowledged as one of the most influential painters in Western art history. While best known as a landscape painter, his work explored many aspects of the rapidly changing world in which he lived: industrialisation, profound social change and political and economic upheaval. Revealing a precocious talent from an early age, his first works followed the prevailing style of realism. However, rejecting established conventions, he soon developed a far more expressive approach, using loose brushstrokes – and sometimes his thumb or a palette knife – to create dynamic compositions. Employing colour and light not only to represent his subjects but also to evoke emotion, Turner transformed the course of landscape painting and anticipated artistic developments that would emerge many decades later. As a precursor of modern art, he exerted a profound influence on both Impressionism in the late 19^th century and Abstract Expressionism in the 20^th century. His artistic legacy has continued to shape generations of artists since his death in 1851.

Venice, Turner’s enduring fascination: Turner was intrigued by the very idea of Venice, his imagination fuelled by the writings of Shakespeare and Lord Byron. He made three journeys to the city – in 1819, 1833 and 1840 – the first when he was already a mature artist of 44. Each visit took place in late summer, when humidity shrouds the canals in a soft haze and the light seems to make the buildings levitate above the lagoon. Although Turner exhibited only 25 Venetian paintings during his lifetime, his output was remarkably prolific: over the course of his three visits, he produced some 150 watercolours and as many as 900 drawings in less than four weeks. His oil paintings of Venice were created later, upon his return to his London studio.

Capturing Turner’s light in enamel: The new Reverso Tribute Enamel timepieces unite the crafts of enamel miniature painting and paillonné enamelling on the casebacks with guillochage and enamel on the dials. The swivelling case of the Reverso lends itself naturally to artistic decoration and Jaeger-LeCoultre has used the blank metal reverse side of the case as a canvas on which its enamellers have created a series of highly accurate, miniaturised reproductions of celebrated works of art. To reproduce the shimmering beauty of Turner’s paintings, each Reverso Tribute Enamel timepiece requires approximately 80 hours of work.

As Turner’s works were of different formats, each view was cropped to capture the essence of the composition while also fitting the portrait orientation of the Reverso case. For each watch, the first of many challenges was to miniaturise the original works – the largest measuring 68 x 91 cm – to 2 cm^2, literally postage-stamp size, without losing any detail.

Equally important was capturing the ethereal quality of light and its shimmering effect on the water, as well as recreating Turner’s subtle interplay of perspective that characterises the original paintings. To achieve the ‘floating’ effect created by the clouds required the enameller to work across multiple enamel planes – a complex technique that began with the enameller to painting the clouds as part of the original miniature work, then applying (and firing) two layers of translucent enamel to those areas. The clouds are then repainted on top of these translucent layers before two more layers of translucent enamel are applied over the entire surface. To enhance the limpid effect of the light, the enameller used the craft of paillonage on areas depicting water, applying a sheet of silver leaf over the base enamel before beginning to paint the image with translucent coloured enamel.

To achieve the desired effects, each work required 14 layers of enamel – three base layers, four layers of painting and seven layers of translucent ‘fondant’ – with separate firings at 800°C after each layer. Discreetly positioned on each image, a secret signature in the form of a gold-leaf paillon identifies the enameller who created the piece.

The dialogue of guillochage and enamel: The colourful dials are decorated with meticulously hand-guilloché patterns beneath translucent Grand Feu enamel, with the patterns and colours chosen in response to the miniature paintings on the casebacks.

Capturing the light with every movement of the wrist, the intricate hand-guilloché patterns are engraved using a manually operated rose engine lathe, requiring up to 1,080 passages of the lathe. After completion of the guillochage, the enamelling requires an additional eight to nine hours of work for each dial, with up to five layers of enamel and six or seven separate firings at 800°C. The final challenge is the faultless application of the faceted indexes (requiring tiny holes to be drilled through the pristine enamel without cracking it) and the transfer of the chemin de fer minute track. The simplicity of the faceted applied hour-markers and Dauphine hands – design codes shared with every Reverso Tribute model – places full value on the beauty of the decoration.

THE LIGHT OF VENICE: FOUR EVOCATIVE WORKS RECREATED IN MINIATURE

While rich in detail, much of the art that Turner created in Venice was less about depicting the city itself than about exploring how the moods of nature – the light, the water and the sky – unfolded against the backdrop of Venice. Compelling and atmospheric, his paintings of La Serenissima capture the city’s fragility and fading glory as well as its grandeur, with a sense of melancholy behind its beauty. The artist evokes the transient effects of light, atmosphere and time with an almost cinematic quality, so that the viewer is not simply looking at an image but experiencing it with multiple senses.

Venice, the Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore: Chosen as the setting for the Homo Faber Biennale, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore sits directly across the lagoon from St Mark’s Square. In Turner’s painting, made in 1834, the emphasis is on light, colour and reflection, with the bright white façade of the island’s eponymous church anchoring the composition and rows of buildings receding into the hazy distance. Silver paillons incorporated beneath the enamel enrich the texture of the lagoon, lending exceptional brilliance to the water and intensifying its constantly shifting reflections. The bustling activity of Venetian life – traders’ sailing boats, small vessels loaded with provisions and gondolas ferrying passengers across the canal – contrasts with the barely rippling surface of the lagoon. The green tones of the water are echoed on the dial, which is decorated with a new guilloché pattern, soleil croisé, creating a subtle texture beneath layers of richly lustrous enamel. This guilloché comprises 180 finely engraved lines, each executed in six successive passages of the rose-engine lathe, for a total of 1,080 passages.

Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute: The hazy light brings a remarkable sense of depth to this view, with the foundations of the buildings seeming to merge into their reflections in the water and their architectural details sublimated by the atmospheric effect of light. Delicately applied silver paillons beneath the enamel heighten the texture of the water, capturing the subtle reflections and shimmering luminosity that define Turner’s vision of Venice. Painted in 1835, this work clearly demonstrates Turner’s evolving style, as he adapts watercolour techniques to oil painting – an innovation denounced by traditionalists that would nevertheless revolutionise the landscape genre. Based on a pencil sketch made by Turner during his first visit to Venice, the composition reflects studies developed further after his second visit in 1833. The green tone of the water is echoed in the Grand Feu enamel dial, where a rice-grain guilloché pattern creates constantly changing effects of light and shade as the wrist turns, echoing Turner’s rendering of Venice’s shimmering atmosphere. This vertical barleycorn guilloché is achieved through 70 precisely engraved lines, each requiring six successive passages of the rose-engine lathe, for a total of 420 operations.

Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace & Custom House, Venice: A direct tribute to the great 18^th-century Venetian artist Giovanni Antonio Canaletto, this is the first view of Venice that Turner painted in oils, completed 14 years after his initial visit to the city. Although not shown in this crop, the original painting depicts Canaletto seated at his easel in the far left of the composition. With reflections smudged by the hazy atmosphere of a late-summer day, the buildings appear to float between the lagoon and the sky, the rosy coral colour of the Doge’s Palace providing a counterpoint to the green of the water and the bright cerulean tone of the sky. The subtle reflections of the lagoon are further enhanced by delicate silver paillons beneath the enamel, adding remarkable texture to the water while amplifying its luminous interplay with light. The pure blue sky is echoed in the dial, where a basket-weave guilloché, composed of 46 finely engraved lines executed in six successive passages of the rose-engine lathe, is overlaid with translucent blue Grand Feu enamel, creating a shimmering effect as it catches the light.

Venice, the Bridge of Sighs. In this view of Venice, painted in 1840, Turner captures both the beauty and the decline of the city, contrasting the darker foreground with the glowing light reflected on the buildings. The effect is further enhanced by silver paillons beneath the enamel, which bring exceptional texture to the water while revealing ever-changing reflections as the light plays across the surface. Through the human figures, he expresses his concern for the profound social and economic changes of his time and, when he exhibited the painting, he accompanied it with two lines of a poem adapted from Byron, who had been deeply moved by the fall of the Venetian Republic: “I stood upon a bridge, a palace and a prison on each hand.” The subtle lavender tint in the blue sky is carried over to the Grand Feu enamel dial, where a wavy hand-guilloché pattern evokes the rippling reflections of light on Venice’s canals. This wide and deep horizontal wave guilloché is achieved through 41 precisely engraved lines, each requiring nine successive passes, for a total of 369 passages.

Calibre 822, a timeless movement: Like all time-only Reverso Tribute models, the watches of the Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Turner Series’ are fitted with the manually wound Calibre 822, developed by Jaeger-LeCoultre specifically for the Reverso and a cornerstone of the collection for more than two decades. Shaped to fit the rectangular case, it measures just under 3 mm in height, ensuring the slender profile of the Reverso case and exceptional comfort on the wrist. With a power reserve of 42 hours and a frequency of 21,600 vibrations per hour (3 Hz), Calibre 822 delivers reliable precision, uniting fine watchmaking with the decorative crafts of guillochage, enamelling, paillonage and miniature painting.

Offered in a limited edition of 10 pieces per model, the Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Turner Series’ is a tribute to the city hosting the Homo Faber Biennale.

TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL ‘TURNER SERIES’ – Venice, the Dogana and San Giorgio Maggiore

Original painting: 1834, oil on canvas, 91.5 x 122 cm (National Gallery of Art, Washington DC)

Case: 18K (750/1000) white gold

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: ‘Soleil croisé’ hand-guilloché, Grand Feu enamel

Caseback: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334W1

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL ‘TURNER SERIES’ – Venice, from the Porch of Madonna della Salute

Original painting: 1835, oil on canvas, 91.4 x 122.2 cm (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Case: 18K (750/1000) white gold

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Rice-grain hand-guilloché pattern, Grand Feu enamel

Caseback: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334W2

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL ‘TURNER SERIES’ – Bridge of Sighs, Ducal Palace & Customhouse

Original painting: 1833, oil on mahogany, 51.1 x 81.6 cm, (Tate Britain collection)  

Case: 18K (750/1000) white gold

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Barleycorn hand-guilloché, Grand Feu enamel

Caseback: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334W3

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL ‘TURNER SERIES’ – Venice, the Bridge of Sighs.

Original painting: 1840, oil on canvas, 68.6 x 91.4 mm (Tate Britain collection)

Case: 18K (750/1000) white gold

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Wavy hand-guilloché pattern, Grand Feu enamel

Caseback: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334W4

• An homage to Venice, as seen by a great Impressionist Master
• The timeless design of the Reverso showcases the skills of the Métiers Rares™ Atelier
• Three limited-edition pieces express Jaeger-LeCoultre’s vision of art and culture

To coincide with its participation in the Homo Faber Biennial exhibition in Venice this September, Jaeger-LeCoultre pays homage to the host city with three new limited-edition Reverso Tribute Enamel timepieces. The case-back of each piece features a miniature reproduction of one of Claude Monet’s paintings of Venice, reaffirming the Reverso as an ideal canvas for artistic expression.

An Homage to Venice, Captured by the Great Impressionist Master, Claude Monet

Painted late in his career, Monet’s ‘Venice Series’ paintings exquisitely render the architecture and exceptional light of Venice that immediately captivated the artist when he and his wife arrived in La Serenissima in autumn 1908. At first declaring the city “too beautiful to paint”, Monet soon set to work, choosing a dozen different sites and painting them repeatedly at different times of day to capture the changing light. It was a prolific period: during his 10-week stay, Monet painted 37 images.

Intricate Works of Craftsmanship Celebrating the Métiers Rares™ Atelier

Homo Faber’s mission to honour and promote craft in all of its forms closely mirrors Jaeger-LeCoultre’s commitment to support not only the craft skills of watchmaking but also the artistic crafts associated with Haute Horlogerie. With the new Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Venice Series’ timepieces, La Grande Maison showcases the talents and skills of the Manufacture’s in-house Métiers Rares™ (Rare Handcrafts) Atelier - bringing together the crafts of miniature painting, enamelling and guillochage - while paying tribute to the mission that it shares with Homo Faber.

The first of many challenges in decorating the case-back was to reproduce original works measuring more than 65 x 92 cm onto a surface of 25 x 20 mm. It was not only a feat of miniaturisation to perfectly mimic every detail of Monet’s paintings; the enameller also had to create an illusion of the impasto (the textured effect of thicker paint that the artist applied when he finished the canvases in his studio at Giverny) and recreate the dreamlike quality of the originals, with their fleeting effects of light and atmosphere. It required 14 layers of enamel to achieve the desired intensity and depth of colour – three base layers, four layers of painting and seven layers of translucent ‘fondant’, with up to 15 separate firings at up to 800° Celsius.

The three dials, decorated with hand-guilloché patterns beneath translucent coloured enamel, are an eloquent artistic response to the miniature paintings on the case-backs. The enamelling alone requires eight or nine hours of work for each dial, with up to five layers of enamel and six or seven separate firings at up to 800°C. The final challenge is the faultless application of the indexes (requiring tiny holes to be drilled through the pristine enamel) and the transfer of the chemin de fer minutes register. The simplicity of the Reverso Tribute design codes – faceted appliqué hour-markers and Dauphine hands – places full value on the beauty of the decoration.

Three Celebrated Artworks Complemented by Jaeger-LeCoultre’s Vision of Art and Culture

San Giorgio Maggiore at Dusk. Chosen as the setting for the Homo Faber Biennial, the island of San Giorgio Maggiore, opposite St Mark’s Square, captivated Monet. In this view, painted as the sun set behind the island, the emphasis is on light, colours and reflections, reducing the buildings to a silhouette that anchors the composition. The miniaturised reproduction of Monet’s celebrated painting required approximately 70 hours of meticulous work. The dial features grand feu enamel in a shade of blue that perfectly complements the colours of the sky on the case-back painting. Echoing the geometric lines of the Reverso’s Art Deco design, the herringbone guilloché pattern comprises 120 separate lines, each of which requires three passages of the lathe, making 360 lines altogether – a meticulous task that takes eight hours to complete.

The Grand Canal Venice. With a remarkable sense of depth and movement, this spellbinding view across the Grand Canal was painted in the afternoon. The church of Santa Maria della Salute appears to be floating on the water, its architectural details sublimated to the effect of the hazy light. The case-back that faithfully reproduces this masterwork required almost 70 hours of enamelling work. The wavy hand-guilloché pattern on the dial – which took eight hours of meticulous work to create – repeats the reflections on the water’s surface depicted in Monet’s painting. The visual effect of the waves is amplified by layers of translucent grand feu enamel in a soft shade of green that matches the water.

The Doge’s Palace. Painted from a gondola in the middle of Grand Canal at 8.00am, this view of the Doge’s Palace beautifully evokes the effect of morning light on the water. “The palace…was just an excuse for painting the atmosphere,” Monet wrote to a friend. To reproduce the shimmering beauty of this painting, Jaeger-LeCoultre’s enameller worked for almost 70 hours in total. On the dial, the lozenge guilloché pattern creates constantly changing effects of light and shade as it is turned at different angles, echoing Monet’s fascination with the effect of light on water at different times of day. Amplified by rich layers of translucent blue grand feu enamel, the geometric pattern comprises 981 lines, each of which requires five passages of the lathe. With a total of 4,905 passages of hand-operated lathe altogether, this highly skilled work takes eight hours to complete.

Offered in a limited edition of 10 pieces each, the Reverso Tribute Enamel ‘Venice Series’ is a fine tribute to the city that hosts the Homo Faber Biennial and a superb marriage of fine watchmaking with the decorative crafts of guillochage, enamelling and miniature painting.

TECHNICAL CHARACTERISTICS

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL MONET – SAN GIORGIO MAGGIORE

Case: 18-karat white gold (750/1000)

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually-wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Herringbone guilloché, Grand Feu enamel

Case-back: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334M4

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL MONET – THE GRAND CANAL

Case: 18-karat white gold (750/1000)

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually-wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Wavy guilloché, Grand Feu enamel

Case-back: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334M5

REVERSO TRIBUTE ENAMEL MONET – THE DOGES’ PALACE

Case: 18-karat white gold (750/1000)

Dimensions: 45.6 x 27.4 mm x 9.73 mm thick

Calibre: Manually-wound Jaeger-LeCoultre Calibre 822

Functions: Hours, minutes

Power Reserve: 42 hours

Front dial: Lozenge guilloché pattern, Grand Feu enamel

Case-back: Miniature-painted Grand-Feu enamel

Water resistance: 3 bar

Strap: Black alligator

Reference: Q39334M6