Description and research notes
An engraved master-die portrait of José Gervasio Artigas produced by Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co., London, this proof is a cornerstone document of early-twentieth-century Uruguayan currency engraving. Struck in black on thin India paper and mounted to card, it bears the printed legend “URUGUAY — Bradbury, Wilkinson & Co. Ld. Engravers, London — 192A” and a bold diagonal ‘Cancelled’ overstamp applied when the die was withdrawn from active use.
Bradbury Wilkinson, the primary British competitor to the American Bank Note Company, supplied Uruguay and other Latin-American republics with engraved master vignettes during the 1910s–1920s. The ‘192A’ Artigas portrait was prepared as a reusable central vignette, later adapted for several Banco de la República issues and specimen trials. Its clean neoclassical profile contrasts sharply with ABNC’s heroic-romantic Artigas, signaling the European stylistic pivot toward photographic realism.
Engraved die proofs such as this were pulled directly from the master steel die before tempering and were retained only in a few reference impressions for quality control and archive. Most were destroyed when printing plates were re-cut in the inter-war consolidation of BW & Co. archives. Surviving signed or labeled examples are thus exceedingly scarce.
The present proof, uncatalogued and uncased, represents a pure artifact of engraving craft—each line cut by hand under magnification, each tone built through mechanical cross-hatching. It stands as the British counterpart to ABNC’s New World tradition and a tangible link between Uruguay’s nineteenth-century heroic iconography and its modern numismatic identity.