An exceptional English enamel watch chatelaine by the renowned Anglo-Swiss goldsmith George Michael Moser (1706-83) surfaced in Italy in late spring.
Apparently the pair to another in the Royal Collection, it took €13,000 (£11,000) at Wannenes Art Auctions (30/25/22% buyer’s premium inc VAT) in Milan on May 16, against an estimate of €5000-8000.
English enamel watch chatelaine by George Michael Moser, €13,000 (£11,000) at Wannenes Art Auctions in Milan.
The best gold-chaser and enameller of his generation, Moser also held a prominent position in London’s artistic community as the first keeper of the Royal Academy schools.
When he died in January 1783, Sir Joshua Reynolds wrote his obituary in which he called Moser “England’s finest goldsmith” and “the father of the present race of artists”. A portrait of Moser and his wife, Mary Guynier, painted in London c.1742 by the Bavarian artist Carl Marcus Tuscher, is in the Museum of the Home in London.
Moser designed and created many works for the Hanoverian household including enamel portraits of the royal children and a series watch cases for which he received ‘a hatful of guineas.’
There are thought to be about 20 surviving examples of Moser’s enamelled watches, most decorated en grisaille in the neoclassical taste popular by the 1770s.
'King's commission'
English enamel watch chatelaine by George Michael Moser, €13,000 (£11,000) at Wannenes Art Auctions in Milan.
The auction house believed that this piece, suspending two gold keys and two ‘virgin’ seal holders, was commissioned by George III himself for Queen Charlotte, identifying the two smaller cameo-style portrait medallions as Princess Charlotte (later Queen Charlotte of Württemberg, 1766-1828) and George Augustus Frederick (George IV of Hanover, 1762-1830).
More certainly, the chatelaine (that had arrived for sale in Milan with an associated 19th century Swiss enamel watch) was probably originally matched to a watch c.1776 offered at auction by German horology specialist Dr Crott in November 2018 and later sold by a London dealer to a private collector for a price around £50,000. The quarter repeating watch by James Snelling has a case signed Moser F[ecit] similarly painted with a scene of two Greek sibyls in a garden.
It also appears to be the near pair to another chatelaine by Moser with a watch (now housing a movement by Mudge and Dutton) in the Royal Collection. Assuming the same form, it differs only in the choice of enamelled scenes.
