500 Francs

The Banque de la Guadeloupe was one of several colonial privilege banks operating in the French Antilles, and its higher denominations were perennially vulnerable to counterfeiting pressure — one reason the 500 Francs was entrusted to the Banque de France printing works rather than a commercial house. Marguerite Dreyfus, who signed her intaglio work as "Rita," was among the more accomplished engravers of her generation at the BdF atelier, though her name rarely appears in collector literature.

The 1934–1944 date span covers the Vichy period, during which Guadeloupe's monetary arrangements were complicated by the island's eventual ralliance to the Free French in 1943. Notes already in circulation were not withdrawn immediately.