The
Currency Commission of the Irish Free State prescribed the design of the notes and received advice from an advisory commission.
Waterlow and Sons, Limited,
London printed the notes on behalf of the commission. The series consists of notes in seven denominations: 10s, £1, £5, £10, £20, £50 and £100. Each note has a portrait of
Lady Lavery – wife of the artist
Sir John Lavery, who was commissioned to design this feature. The original oil on canvas painting of Lady Lavery, titled
Portrait of Lady Lavery as Kathleen Ni Houlihan (1927), is displayed at the
National Gallery of Ireland on loan from the
Central Bank of Ireland. From the description of Lady Lavery's portrait at the National Gallery: The banknote design placed the portrait on the left of the banknotes, so the image from the painting was reversed to face right. The full portrait appears on the larger £10, £20, £50 and £100 notes but is reduced to a head and shoulders version on the smaller 10s, £1 and £5 notes. The head from the portrait was later used as a watermark on the
Series B and
Series C banknotes until 2002. The watermark on all Series A banknotes is the "Head of
Erin" taken from the statue,
Hibernia with the Bust of Lord Cloncurry (1844), sculpted in Rome by
John Hogan and brought to Ireland in 1846. The statue depicts Ireland, represented by the allegorical female figure of Hibernia, also known as “Erin”, with her arm around a bust of Lord Cloncurry. Hogan modeled the female figure after his Italian wife, Cornelia Bevignani. This statue is considered by some authorities to be Hogan’s masterpiece. and "one of the finest examples of Irish
neoclassical sculpture". The statue is in the collection of
University College Dublin and is located at Belfield House. The reverse of each denomination features the head of a "River God" representing one of the
rivers of Ireland taken from a keystone on
the Custom House in
Dublin sculpted by
Edward Smyth. Rivers in both the
Irish Free State and
Northern Ireland were chosen. The Currency Commission notes were printed with
Currency Commission/Coimisiún Airgid Reatha and
Irish Free State/Saorstát Éireann with facsimiles of the signatures of the
Chairman of the Currency Commission/Cathaoirleach Choimisiúin an Airgid Reatha and of the
Secretary of the Department of Finance/Rúnaí na Roinne Airgid. When the
Constitution of Ireland had legal effect
Ireland was substituted for Irish Free State,
Éire for Saorstát Éireann. In 1943 additional changes were made when the Central Bank Act of 1942 gave legal effect. The Currency Commission was replaced with
Central Bank of Ireland/Banc Ceannais na hÉireann on the notes and the signature of the chairman was replaced with that of
Governor/An Ghobharnóir. Banknotes produced during the
Second World War were overprinted with different letters so that particular batches could be identified and removed from circulation if they were lost in transit between the printers in Britain and Dublin. The promise of exchange in London was removed from the notes in 1961. A metal security thread was added to the £1, £5 and £10 notes in 1971. † No £100 note was issued in
Series B. The Series A £100 note remained in use until the
Series C £100 note was issued in 1996. ==See also==