$500 notes of the Banco de Londres y México

Both of the animal vignettes on the $500 note are based on paintings by the renowned French artist Rosa Bonheur (1822-1889) and were engraved by James Smillie. The face vignette is “A Family of Lions” from Bonheur’s 1881 “The Lions At Home”.

The vignette on the back was entitled "Horse Breaking" and is taken from Bonheur’s “The Horse Fair”. This painting debuted at the Paris Salon of 1853, and was gifted by Cornelius Vanderbilt in 1887, a day after he paid $55,000 for it, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where it presently resides.

James Smillie joined the National Bank Note Company (NBNC) in 1861. He (or his son, James D. Smillie) subsequently engraved a full version of Bonheur’s “The Horse Fair”, which appeared on several U.S. banknotes. Partial vignettes with one or three horses were initially engraved by Henry S. Beckwith in 1867 when he was at the NBNC and the three-horse vignette, used by the Banco de Londres y México, was later, around 1877, finished by James Smillie while he was still at the NBNC. The American Bank Note Company inherited this die in 1879 when it absorbed the NBNC,