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Lot Essay
Little is known of A. A. Lejeune who signed this work. The composition depicts assignats, identity cards, a membership card for the Comité Révolutionnaire and other papers relating to the new Republic established after the French Revolution.
The assignat was introduced in December 1789 by the National Assembly, originally as a bond yielding 5% interest per annum, with recently seized church properties serving as security. The assignat was turned into paper currency in September 1792 and the amount of assignats in circulation increased from 400 million to 1,200 million. The value of the assignat fell to such a low level that by 1796 a new form of paper money, the mandats territoriaux, was created to replace the assignat. The mandats are also reproduced in this composition. As the value of that new paper money slumped, metallic currency was reintroduced on 4 December 1797. When, in 1989, the present drawing was exhibited at the Morgan Library (Words of Blood, op. cit.), the curator of the show, Olivier Bernier, noted that Lejeune’s work ‘can be seen as a scathing comment on the state of currency’ (unpublished label).
A similar drawing, dated 14 June 1796, was offered at Sotheby’s, New York, 24 January 2002, lot 107.
The assignat was introduced in December 1789 by the National Assembly, originally as a bond yielding 5% interest per annum, with recently seized church properties serving as security. The assignat was turned into paper currency in September 1792 and the amount of assignats in circulation increased from 400 million to 1,200 million. The value of the assignat fell to such a low level that by 1796 a new form of paper money, the mandats territoriaux, was created to replace the assignat. The mandats are also reproduced in this composition. As the value of that new paper money slumped, metallic currency was reintroduced on 4 December 1797. When, in 1989, the present drawing was exhibited at the Morgan Library (Words of Blood, op. cit.), the curator of the show, Olivier Bernier, noted that Lejeune’s work ‘can be seen as a scathing comment on the state of currency’ (unpublished label).
A similar drawing, dated 14 June 1796, was offered at Sotheby’s, New York, 24 January 2002, lot 107.