Repeater watch

Pierre Michaud

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The scene on the back of the watchcase is copied in miniature from a genre painting by Jean-Baptiste Greuze (1725–1805) titled The Father Reading the Bible to His Children, which was exhibited to great acclaim in the 1755 Paris Salon. The watchmaker, originally from Orléans, became a master in Geneva in 1771. He seems to have had an earlier career in Paris, as this watch would indicate, but there are no traces of him in the records of the time. He is likely to have been a Protestant, as the choice of the scene on the enameled case would suggest, and his religion would have prevented his becoming a master watchmaker in Paris.

European Sculpture and Decorative Arts

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The fifty thousand objects in the Museum's comprehensive and historically important collection of European sculpture and decorative arts reflect the development of a number of art forms in Western European countries from the early fifteenth through the early twentieth century. The holdings include sculpture in many sizes and media, woodwork and furniture, ceramics and glass, metalwork and jewelry, horological and mathematical instruments, and tapestries and textiles. Ceramics made in Asia for export to European markets and sculpture and decorative arts produced in Latin America during this period are also included among these works.

Metropolitan Museum of Art