Description and research notes
The 100 Pesos issue authorized under the Ley de 18 de Agosto 1896 stands as the high point of Uruguay’s late-nineteenth-century engraving work at the American Bank Note Company in New York. Conceived during a period of rapid economic modernization and heavy foreign capital inflow, this design represented the Republic’s ambition to present its currency on equal footing with the great financial institutions of Europe and the Americas.
These black-and-white photographic proofs are not paper trials but original engraver’s approval prints, made directly from the master dies before any steel plates were hardened for production. Each was printed on sensitized photographic paper, carefully mounted to thin card, and retained for internal ABNC inspection. They belong to the handful of surviving pre-plate documentation sets that reveal how the firm balanced classical symmetry, allegorical iconography, and national symbolism.
The obverse displays dual portraits of José Gervasio Artigas and Fructuoso Rivera—figures representing Uruguay’s founding duality of revolutionary idealism and pragmatic statecraft—framed within a richly engraved neoclassical cartouche. The reverse, a complex allegory of prosperity and civic order, shows a seated female figure beside the national arms, flanked by motifs of agriculture and maritime commerce. Every element mirrors the ABNC’s late-Victorian aesthetic: tight guilloches, shadow-engraved lettering, and precise micro-lathe borders that could only be appreciated at full proof scale.
By 1896 Uruguay had re-established a stable national currency after the disruptions of the previous decades, and the Banco de la República Oriental del Uruguay emerged as the state’s principal issuer. High-denomination designs such as this 100 Pesos were never intended for mass circulation—they served to anchor confidence in the paper peso and to communicate fiscal credibility abroad. Surviving archival proof pairs are among the rarest artifacts of the country’s monetary heritage, as the ABNC preserved only a few photographic documentation sets before the original plates were cancelled.
Both sides of this pair are graded PCGS 63 Choice New, showing full tonal range and exceptional preservation of surface detail. Beyond their beauty, they document the apex of Uruguayan note design and the influence of American bank-note engraving on Latin America’s emerging financial identity at the turn of the century.