Description and research notes
The 5 Pesos denomination from the 1896 ABNC series illustrates how Uruguay’s central bank adopted industrial modernity as a theme for national confidence. These photographic proofs—engraver’s approval prints mounted on thin card—were created directly from the steel dies before production. They preserve the visual language of economic optimism that defined the post-Civil War generation.
On the face, José Gervasio Artigas is framed by crisp guilloche and vegetal scrollwork, his image rendered with the precision of ABNC’s burin engravers. The reverse shifts focus to the industrial age: a grand building façade with machinery motifs and civic emblems, symbolizing progress and public works. The composition bridges classical allegory and the architectural realism fashionable in Latin-American design by the late 1890s.
The 5 Pesos occupied a working-class yet aspirational tier in the denomination ladder—valuable enough to store wealth but still tied to daily commercial life. During this era Uruguay’s meat-packing and wool-export industries flourished, fueling the need for a stable medium of exchange. ABNC’s engravings projected the nation’s prosperity outward, reassuring foreign investors and domestic citizens alike.
Complete face-and-back proof pairs of this type are rarely encountered, the majority lost during ABNC archive reductions. The present pair, graded PCGS 63 Choice New, represents one of the few intact documentary survivals of Uruguay’s industrial-age symbolism rendered through American engraving discipline.