Swiss watchmaker Breguet is to support a captivating retrospective dedicated to Queen Marie Antoinette of France, which will open in Japan later this year.

The exhibition, entitled ‘Marie Antoinette, a Queen in Versailles’, will run from October 25 to February 26 next year in the renowned Mori Arts Center Gallery in Tokyo. The retrospective is being held by the Palace of Versailles with the support of Breguet and Nippon Television.

Through a large number of works of art from the Versailles collections as well as loans from other public and private collections in France and abroad, the exhibition will provide, for the very first time in Japan, a wide-ranging evocation of the life of Marie-Antoinette, from her youth in Vienna through to her tragic end.

Portraits of the Queen and members of the royal family by the Court’s finest portrait artists – and in particular François-Hubert Drouais, Louis Michel Vanloo and Joseph Siffred Duplessis – will familiarise visitors with the people among whom Marie-Antoinette lived in France: King Louis XV, the grand-father of Louis XVI, her brothers in law, the Counts of Provence and Artois… And also artist Élisabeth-Louise Vigée-Lebrun who captured the queen’s essence in her works, won her trust and left us some of the portraits of Marie-Antoinette.

The Queen’s own tastes will also feature prominently in the exhibition. Assisted by the royal administration of the Crown Furniture Inventory, Marie-Antoinette gathered some of the finest craftsmen around her, such as cabinet-maker Jean Henri Riesener, joiner Georges Jacob or bronze-maker Pierre-Philippe Thomire, to design the precious furnishings or objects for the sumptuous, refined decor she liked to surround herself with. The variety of tableware designed by the Sèvres Royal Porcelain Works are featured, and more particularly the “Japan” service inspired by Imari porcelain or the famous “Pearls and Cornflower” dinner service made for Trianon. 

The most original and spectacular feature of the exhibition will be its presentation of the Queen’s private apartment, laid out from 1782 onwards on the ground floor on the marble courtyard. The bedroom and bathroom will be fitted out with a large part of their furnishings, while the stucco library which has now disappeared will be reproduced in 3D. 

The exhibition of almost 150 works provides an insight into the riches and innovation that marked the creations inspired by Marie-Antoinette.

BREQUET’S BONDS

Breguet has close bonds with the last Queen of France. Abraham-Louis Breguet, who founded his manufacture in Paris back in 1775, received his first order from Marie Antoinette in 1782 for a perpetual repeater watch with calendar.

He went on to make several more timepieces for the queen, who also commissioned a watch from within the Temple prison where she was held in 1792 before being executed for treason in 1793.

One of these watches made by him for the queen would remain the most complicated wristwatch ever produced for almost a century. In 1783, Brequet received an order to produce a watch for the sovereign that incorporated all the complications and developments known at the time. No limits were set in terms of time or cost, and gold was to be used wherever possible. 

However, the watch was only completed in 1827 – 34 years after the queen’s death, 44 years after it was ordered and four years after the death of Breguet himself. 

The watch then passed hands from collector to collector before ending up in a museum in Jerusalem from where it was stolen in 1983 before being eventually found and returned in 2007.

However, in 2005, when the watch was still missing, the late Nicolas Hayek - who took over Breguet in 1999 as part of the Swatch Group - set his teams the challenge of identically reproducing the pocket watch. 

The task of recreating the complications proved a challenge as the manufacture had to rely solely on details from the archives and original drawings in the Breguet Museum and other cultural centres such as Paris’s Musée des Arts et Métiers. 

During this project, Breguet learned that the queen’s favourite oak in Versailles was about to be cut down and so requested for a piece of wood from the tree to craft the box of the watch. 

In return Breguet supported the palace by restoring Marie Antoinette’s favourite estate and residence - the Petit Trianon - to its former glory. All the original decorative features were restored, museological adjustments made, the apartments refurnished and technical installations revised under the project which started in 2007 and was completed in 2008. 

The Marie Antoinette watch replica - known as the Breguet Grand Complication No. 1160 Pocket Watch - was launched at Baselworld in 2008.

Breguet has also created pieces of exceptional jewellery inspired by the queen’s world. 

One of these is the La Rose de la Reine high jewellery line unveiled in 2009, which is inspired by the famous painting ‘Marie Antoinette with the rose’ by portrait artist Elisabeth Vigée-Le Brun. Breguet recreated the famous rose held in the Queen’s hands using cameo, the traditional Italian art of sculpting the different layers of a shell by hand.

There is also the Les Volants de la Reine collection, which pays tribute to the outfits worn by the last queen of France. First presented in 2014, the range astonishes with the elegance and complexity of its shapes, which recall the finest pleated silks and laces that adorned dresses at the time. 

Also, the Petit Trianon jewellery line, launched in 2009, offers a simple reinterpretation of the refined, royal theme that characterises the place Marie Antoinette cherished so dearly.