France 50 Francs banknote 1933 Luc-Olivier Merson type - Banque De France
Luc-Olivier Merson (21 May 1846 – 13 November 1920) was a French academic painter and illustrator also known for his postage stamp and currency designs.
Obverse: A lovely fruit garland, at the top of a fruit garland a cartouche with bank name (Banque de France) flanked by two winged cupids and thoughtful young Mercury seated in the lower part of the banknote framed by two wreath of fruits around watermarks area.
Reverse: Allegorical couple framed by wreath of fruits: a blacksmith seated on a pedestal and holding a hammer in his left hand and a young woman. This allegorical scene is Minerve (maybe France) Accompanying the Work.
The two watermarks each represent a woman's head in profile.
Dimensions 170 mm x 123 mm.
Withdrawn from circulation: 26 January 1942.
Annulled as legal tender: June 4, 1945.
This bank note was issued at the time of the creation of the Franc Poincare (which was worth 1/5th of the Franc Germinal) and was printed between 1927 and 1934.
After World War I, the franc floated on the foreign exchange market and depreciated. This deterioration in the purchasing power of money was due to war and reconstruction expenses, the rise in public debt and the trade balance deficit. Thanks to the policy conducted by Raymond Poincaré, the franc stabilized on the foreign exchange market in 1926. A debate then took place between advocates of a revaluation of the franc to its pre-war level (franc germinal) and those in favor of a devaluation of the franc to its real value. In 1928, the Poincaré government chose to devalue the franc by 80%: the “franc Poincaré” was only worth a fifth of the gold equivalent of the franc germinal. A new law partially re-established the convertibility of banknotes into gold: this system was known as the “gold bullion standard” where gold bullion was sold at a fixed price in exchange for banknotes at the Banque de France.