On 27 December 1902 Sevillian painter José Villegas wrote in a familiar tone to Francisco Belda, Marquis of Cuba, who was then Deputy Governor of the Banco de España, to advise him that ‘on Monday 29^th next, I will bring the drawings and portrait of the King, so let me please know if that were not convenient’. Villegas had been Director of the Prado since the end of the previous year, and had asked Belda several days earlier to be lent his ‘four drawings so that, with the others, H.M. the King can see the complete series, as he has expressed his desire to see them. Some days later, I will deliver the whole set of ten’.  He was referring to the drawings for banknotes that the Bank had commissioned at the same time as it asked him to paint his iconic portrait of the monarch. This magnificent portrait immediately became one of the most significant pieces of the Banco de España Collection, and certainly one of the best portrayals of King Alfonso XIII. It was acclaimed by critics as one of the most outstanding examples of contemporary Spanish painting.

However, the fate of the drawings for the series of new banknotes to which the painter refers in those letters was not as successful. The final models designed by Villegas were widely featured in the press, but not all of them came into circulation- They formed part of an episode of artistic renewal of banknotes that was frustrated by the lack of technical facilities on which to produce them.

The Banco de España Board had decided to create a General Plan to protect Spanish paper currency and stem banknote forgery. The plan included a proposal to commission original designs from first-rate artists to make banknotes difficult to imitate. The works commissioned from Villegas had the novel feature of being the first artistic creations designed by a painter to occupy a space that was traditionally used for the reproduction of famous works or decorative structures with modest allegorical details and which sought, through symbolist language, to substantiate concepts related to their fiat value, but above all to some of the significant aspects of the country’s heritage. They are also the earliest examples in the history of Spanish banknotes where the artistic composition occupied the whole front and back of the paper, and the essential information for their use was included in the artistic composition itself.

The drawings in the Banco de España Collection are carefully prepared on a pink wash background, where the perfectly planned blank area is reserved for the watermark, as can be seen from its light, precise preparation in pencil for the wash to be precisely applied, along with the use of graph paper. They must therefore be considered as final, visible models, in contrast with the preliminary sketch for the twenty-five-peseta note that is kept in the Seville Fine Arts Museum. The drawing style of the bulk of the set in Madrid has a calculated, firm line that denotes conscientious study by the artist. That may explain the lack of the elegant, sinuous work characteristic of his drawings, which are always recognisable by the rhythmic, loose lines with which he worked. Here those lines are replaced by lines ready for engraving.

The figures are clearly closely related to the set – called The Artist’s Attic – that he worked on from 1898 onwards, produced originally under a commission to decorate a religious text, but which gradually became the great pictorial swansong of the Andalusian master. Thus, the design of the banknotes is of interest as it gives continuity in an official commission to the symbolist language that the master developed in those works, in which there are direct links to the figures from the banknote compositions, soe of which are actually reused there.

A full description of all the banknotes in the General Plan was announced in the press on 2 January 1903, and on that same date the Banco de Espana’s Executive Board agreed to express its gratitude for the drawings received from Villegas. However, Tortella dates the Board agreement for Villegas to produce the drawings to the start of that year. In any event, the first banknote – the 100-peseta note – of those designed by Villegas was issued on 1 July of that same year. Its front depicted a stoker in a steam engine and its back a hippogriff (symbolising progress) surrounded by images of modernity – blast furnaces, the railway and the telegraph. This set of images was approved by the relevant officials to represent modernity protected by the State. The drawing held by the Bank, however, is not exactly that same image. It can thus be thought of as an earlier, not very detailed version that was subsequently discarded. There is only the hippogriff with the naked man taming it, with none of the features of modernity that would appear on the final banknote.  Furthermore, the phylactery with the fiat value in the lower left corner appears above the hippogriff’s head on the printed version. Around the head there are also rays, forming a halo, which in the drawing appear around the gap for the watermark. The banknote was in circulation by October 1904 and there were already forgeries by early 1905.The issuing of a new print run of the banknote on 25 August 1905, with no changes to its design despite those forgeries, decreases the likelihood of the sketch being an alternative version. We should therefore consider this drawing as the first version of the banknote submitted by Villegas, prior to the changes made for the final design used by Bartolomé Maura for the engraving. 

Two more banknotes designed by Villegas were also in circulation at that time. The five-hundred-peseta note, engraved by Maura, has drawings that seem to have been approved in September 1903. The front depicts a foreshortened figure of Mercury, with four arms, and Science and Agriculture appear on the back.  It was issued on 9 April 1906 and no preliminary drawings for it are known. There is a sketch, already mentioned, for the twenty-five-peseta note, which has the special distinction of being the first banknote on which the new façade of the Banco de España appears; nothing more is known of the thousand-peseta note.

The last three drawings of the set are interrelated, as they are the two sides of the same banknote (the fifty-peseta note). There is no mention of it coming into circulation, although there are some extremely rare proofs of the final print with the watermark.  It is interesting because two drawings were kept for the front, the subject of which the press described as the ‘inspiring genius of painting’. One of them, with a passepartout bearing the signature of Ricardo Maura (the son of Bartolomé, whom the Bank commissioned to adapt the design submitted by the Andalusian master to the conditions required for it to be printed at that time) has an inscription under the drawing stating that it had been approved for printing; that is most likely the reason for the cleaned-up version, in which the measurements are different. A third drawing, for the back, also survives. It depicts Commerce’s protection of Fine Arts, and was designed by Villegas, as the press had also announced.

This small set of drawings most certainly took into account the models created by Villegas, to whom their ideas and formal concept clearly belong. Yet the existence of a drawing certainly by Ricardo Maura which is very similar but not exactly the same in the set, to adapt the compositions to the formats required for each banknote (following the instructions of the Board) and the absence of the Villegas’ signature on the others may lead us to wonder whether all these drawings are not in some way part of an internal process with the models designed by Villegas in 1902, but actually produced by Maura with the tweaks required to meet statutory and information requirements set by the Bank. That may better explain the existence of a drawing such as the hippogriff in flight, as an early version submitted perhaps by the painter that was discarded by the Board and then changed to the form that can now be recognised in the finished banknote. In any case, this small set is highly valuable in understanding the process for the design of the banknotes of the Banco de España.

Carlos González Navarro