The Tamara de Lempicka Quartet

Four Grande Taille Reversos shown at the Geneva watch fair (SIHH) in 2003, each case-back enamelled with a miniature reproduction of a different painting by Tamara de Lempicka, the Art Deco portraitist — and, unlike almost everything else in this archive, never produced for sale at all. One collector who saw them has written that he has “forever dreamed” of the set since. Pieces like this exist in Jaeger-LeCoultre’s own accumulated stock of enamel work for reasons that have nothing to do with commerce: some are works in progress, others demonstration pieces the manufacture keeps specifically to show at exhibitions, since reproducing a painting in enamel miniature demands that the enameller match not just the original artist’s draughtsmanship at a fraction of the scale, but the exact colour of the source work as well. Individual titles for the four Lempicka paintings reproduced are not documented in the source describing them.