BAD BANK NOTE

Evening Post, Issue 113, 10 November 1930, Page 4

BAD BANK NOTE

DAMAGES FOR ARTIST

France is keeping up her reputation as the country where the arts are respected, says the "Daily Telegraph.". In what other would the National Bank be condemned to pay damages to a painter for having destroyed the artistic unity of the design of a bunk note by reproducing it badly? Yet that is what the Bank of France will have to do for Luc Olivier Merson, or rather for his memory, as ho is dead. His heirs, who brought the action, deliberately reduced their demand to nominal damages, and asked only that tho name of tbo artist' should be removed from the notes, as the country would have :been involved in very heavy ex■penseif the design had been withdrawn altogether. • However, the bank will have to pay a fine for every note which in future appears with the signature. No doubt the objection which the ordinary man has to the new fifty-franc note, which is the one in question, is not artistic, but practical, and it is that its colour is much too-like that of the* hundred-, franc note. ' ! No doubt it is also true that Franco,1 with:"all her- great artistic traditions,is content to put up with postage stamps, epinage, and notes, which aie nearly-' always artistically detestable. Nevertheless the judgment which has ;jnst-Jbeen_given. really dues some credit to her sense of artistic justice.