En feiring av tre gjenoppdagede malerier – hvor et har en spesiell norsk link.
I klokkeverdenen er både store og små jubileer noe som markeres. For Jaeger-LeCoultre har har året handlet mye om Reverso, med feiringer av den ikoniske modellens 90-årsjubileum.
Samlet bak det lange modellnavnet Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures, slipper Jaeger-LeCoultre nå en ny trio av den ikoniske klokken. De tre nye referansene retter ikke bare fokus mot Reverso, men hyller også tre spesielle arbeider av billedkunstnerne Gustave Courbet, Vincent Van Gogh og Gustav Klimt. Ett av verkene har også en norsk link – men det kommer vi tilbake til senere.
Gjenoppdagede malerier
Ved første øyekast virker modellnavnet «Enamel Hidden Treasures» kanskje litt svevende, men faktisk er det temmelig rett på sak.
ANNONSE
Jaeger-LeCoultre har nemlig valgt ut tre malerier fra hver av de tidligere nevnte kunstnerne, og reprodusert verkene i tradisjonell «grand feu» emalje på baksiden av de roterbare innerkassene. Tidkrevende håndverk utført ved Jaeger-LeCoultres atelier for «métiers rares» – som du for øvrig kan bli bedre kjent med i vår artikkel her.
Hver av de tre maleriene har på et tidspunkt vært skjult fra omverdenen i flere tiår. Og vi snakker ikke om kunstverk gjemt i samlingene til eksentriske milliardærer, men snarere tre malerier som har vært misattribuert, skjult eller stjålet.
Og i følge Jaeger-LeCoultre går historiene slik:
«Utsikt over Genèvesjøen» (1876) – Gustave Courbet
«In the early 1890s, about 15 years after Courbet’s death, a resident of the town of Granville in Normandy bequeathed this painting, along with two others also attributed to Courbet, to the local art museum – the Musée du Vieux Granville. At the end of World War II, they were moved into a storage locker, where they lay forgotten for 70 years.
In 1995, an expert declared that all three paintings were fakes—either intentional forgeries, or misattributed. The paintings came to light again only in 2015, when the museum’s curator was preparing a document about the history of the museum. She decided to seek a second opinion about their authenticity and consulted the leading Courbet expert Bruno Mottin, of Musées de France.
After extensive research, Mottin confirmed in 2017 that the lake scene was, indeed, by Courbet.»
«Portrett av en kvinne» (1917) – Gustav Klimt
«Not only is this the sole known ‘double’ portrait by the Viennese artist, it is the only ‘twice lost’ one.
The painting’s double identity was discovered only in 1996, when a sharp-eyed art student, Claudia Maga, discovered that Klimt had painted it over an earlier portrait, which had been believed lost since 1912, soon after he painted it. The story behind it is deeply romantic: the earlier portrait was of a young woman whom Klimt had fallen madly in love with. She became his muse, then died prematurely. In the last year of his own life, still grieving his loss, Klimt covered the original portrait with a new painting, of a different lady.
In February 1997, during preparations for a special exhibition, the painting was stolen from the Ricci Oddi Gallery of Modern Art in Piacenza, Italy, where it had hung since 1925, when the eponymous collector, Giuseppe Ricci Oddi bought it. The frame was discarded on the gallery’s roof, suggesting that thieves had taken the painting out through the skylight. However, this was a decoy, since the opening was too small for the frame to fit through. In the years that followed, fakes appeared at various times (including one intercepted at the French border, in a package addressed to former Italian Prime Minister Bettino Craxi) but the original was assumed to be gone for good.
Then, in December 2019, gardeners clearing ivy from an outside wall of the gallery stumbled on a metal panel. Behind it, they found a black rubbish bag containing the missing painting. Experts were quickly able to confirm its authenticity.
The story becomes even stranger: according to testimony given by the thief in return for immunity from prosecution, the painting stolen in 1997 was, in fact, a fake, hung in place of the original, which had already been stolen several months earlier, in a carefully planned inside job. The copy was then stolen to hide the fact that it was a fake, which would have been spotted by experts visiting the exhibition, thus incriminating the accomplice inside the gallery. That leaves the question of how the original came to be hidden in the wall. Judging from its relatively good condition, it could not have been there since it was stolen. So who returned it? When? And why? The mystery remains.«
Norsk forbindelse
Den tredje varianten bygger på et maleri med en spesielt interessant bakgrunnshistorie – i alle fall for oss her i Norge:
«Solnedgang ved Montmajour» (1888) – Vincent van Gogh
«When Van Gogh moved to the South of France in 1888, it marked the beginning of a highly productive period of artistic maturity, as he attempted to portray both nature and the man-made environment in new ways.
On 5th July 1888, Van Gogh wrote to his younger brother Theo: «Yesterday, at sunset, I was on a stony heath where very small, twisted oaks grow, in the background a ruin on the hill, and wheat fields… The sun was pouring its very yellow rays over the bushes and the ground… I brought back a study of it too…» Despite this clear evidence, the painting Van Gogh described, «Sunset at Montmajour», was not authenticated as genuine until 2013. In the interim, it had disappeared completely for 60 years, briefly reappeared, then disappeared again.
In 1908, a Norwegian industrialist and collector, Nicolai Christian Mustad, bought the painting through a Paris dealer. Soon afterwards, according to family lore, the French Ambassador to Sweden, an acquaintance of Mustad with some expertise in 19th-century art, dismissed it as a fake. Upset and embarrassed, Mustad immediately banished the picture to his attic, where it remained, forgotten, until after his death in 1970.
Again dismissed as a fake, it again disappeared, then reappeared briefly in 1991, when another attempt at authentication – by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam – was also dismissed. Finally, in 2011, the Museum’s experts agreed to examine the painting again, using the advanced techniques now available. Among them, chemical tests proved that the pigments matched those on Van Gogh’s palette from Arles. Two years later, in September 2013, it was declared genuine – the first full-sized painting by Van Gogh to be newly authenticated since 1928.»
Nicolai Christian Mustad (1878 – 1970) var en norsk industrileder og deleier av familieselskapet O. Mustad & Søn, som ble startet av faren Hans Mustad.
Samme plattform
Alle de tre spesialmodellene er basert på underkolleksjonen Reverso Tribute, som i design er inspirert av de opprinnelige Reverso-modellene fra 1930-tallet.
De tre variantene har forskjellige farger og ulike guilloche-mønster, men samtlige byr på emaljerte urskive. Kassene er laget av hvitt gull, og måler 45,6 x 27,4 x 9,73 mm (høyde, bredde, tykkelse).
Urverket er av naturlige årsaker ikke synlig, men Jaeger-LeCoultre har likevel ikke tatt noen snarveier. På innsiden av kassen sitter merkets egenproduserte kaliber 822, med manuelt opptrekk og 42 timers gangreserve.
Førsteinntrykk
Generelt kan klokker med intrikate motiver i emalje kunne sies å være for spesielt interesserte. Det reflekteres også i antallet, som er begrenset til ti eksemplarer av hver av de tre variantene. Prisen er ikke bekreftet, men det ryktes om rundt 90.000 euro per stykk.
Personlig er ikke Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures klokker som treffer mitt hjerte, men det er likevel ingenting galt å sette fingeren på. Det koker ned til individuell smak (og lommebok).
Begrepet «håndverkskunst» brukes kanskje litt for ofte og lettvint om klokker – men for de tre nye Reverso-modellene er det ingen tvil om at vi har med ekte håndverkskunst å gjøre.
Les mer om Reverso Tribute Enamel Hidden Treasures på jaeger-lecoultre.com.
ANNONSE
