1000 Francs

Robert Poughéon was a Prix de Rome laureate and academic painter whose work rarely found its way onto colonial paper currency — this series is something of an exception. The engraving on the obverse was handled by André Marliat, one of the Banque de France's more accomplished intaglio specialists of the postwar decade, while Armanelli took the reverse.

Côte Française des Somalis was a small, strategically positioned territory on the Bab-el-Mandeb strait, and the 1952 issue came at a moment when France was quietly rationalizing its overseas treasury emissions. High denominations like this one saw limited day-to-day movement in a territory with a modest cash economy heavily dependent on the port of Djibouti.