100 Francs - Bleue & rose type 1888

Paul Baudry was a celebrated Salon painter best known for the ceiling decoration of the Paris Opéra — an unusual choice for banknote design work, and it shows. The Banque de France's in-house printing operation leaned heavily on fine-art credentials during this period, commissioning designers whose names carried academic weight rather than commercial print experience. Charles-Jules Robert's engraving translates Baudry's composition into intaglio with considerable skill, though the results sit closer to formal illustration than to the tighter, more functional engraving conventions developing elsewhere in Europe at the time.

The series ran across five distinct signature pairings over two decades — a span long enough that earlier-dated examples and later ones circulated simultaneously, something the Banque de France was entirely comfortable with. The transition from Billotte to Giraud in mid-1900 aligns with routine administrative turnover rather than any monetary event.