1000 Francs Red background

Banque de l'Indo-Chine's 1000 Franc notes of this series were printed by the Banque de France rather than a commercial security printer — an unusual arrangement that reflected the colonial bank's close institutional ties to Paris and its access to sovereign-grade production facilities. Jonas was a well-regarded painter known largely for his First World War commemorative imagery; his involvement here was part of a broader French colonial print tradition of commissioning established fine artists for high-denomination plates.

Beltrand's engraving work is among the more technically accomplished in the Indo-Chinese series. The red background variant, Pick 10A, is distinct from the earlier issues in the sequence and was in circulation just as the Japanese pressure on French Indochina was beginning to reshape the region's financial administration entirely.