Henry Graves (banker)


Henry Graves Jr. was an American banker descended from John Graves of Concord, Massachusetts.

Early life and career

He was born on March 11, 1868 in Orange, New Jersey into a prominent banking family, the son of Henry Graves Sr., a founder and partner in the Maxwell & Graves banking firm. Graves Jr. made millions of dollars in banking and railroads. He was also an art collector whose single-owner sale was held in 1936 by American Art Association Anderson Galleries, Inc., which evolved into Sotheby's. The highlight of that sale was Albrecht Dürer's Adam and Eve, which sold for an impressive $10,000.

Watch collector

An ardent watch collector, Graves was a patron of Patek Philippe, competing with James Ward Packard, the automobile manufacturer, for ownership of the most complicated watch in the world. In 1927 Packard commissioned a complicated watch but, not to be outdone, Graves surpassed his rival in 1933 to become the owner of the most complicated watch ever made.

Supercomplication watch

It was called Patek Philippe Henry Graves Supercomplication. Designed and built by Patek Philippe, it was an ultra-complicated pocket watch. Graves spent 60,000 Swiss francs, nearly five times the price paid by Packard. It took three years to design, another five to manufacture, and was sold to Graves on January 19, 1933. The most advanced techniques in horological engineering produced a truly one-of-a-kind timepiece; only one watch was ever built. Complications included a perpetual calendar with phases and age of the moon, indication of sunrise and sunset, and a celestial chart depicting the stars in the nighttime sky over New York City.
Graves died in 1953. His heirs sold the watch in 1968 to The Time Museum in Rockford, Illinois, which closed in March 1999. The watch was held in the Rockford Time Museum until it was sold at Sotheby's for a record breaking $11,002,500 to an anonymous bidder in New York City on December 2, 1999. The owner was later known to be a member of the Qatari Royal Family, Sheikh Saud bin Muhammed Al Thani. The watch was on loan to the Patek Philippe Museum in Geneva, Switzerland for several years, and was the most expensive single piece on display.

On July 10, 2014, Sotheby's announced that in November 2014, the watch would once again be auctioned.
It sold for 23.2 million Swiss francs at Sotheby’s in Geneva on November 11, 2014, setting a new record price for any timepiece sold at auction.

Personal life

In 1896, Henry Graves married Florence Isabel Preston of Irvington-on-Hudson, New York, and they had four children. Mr. and Mrs. Graves owned several vacation homes in addition to their residence in New York City. The family spent their summers at their homes in Irvington and Saranac, New York. In Saranac, the Graves owned Eagle Island, where Mr. Graves reveled in one of his sporting passions—boating. The Island has been named a National Historic Landmark, and has been operated for many years as a children's summer camp. One of his treasured boats was the Eagle, a 50-foot speedboat.

Death

Graves died aged 85 on March 21, 1953 in New York City.