Frankrijk 10 Euro 2023 Young Girl Blowing Kitagawa Zilver PROOFMonnaie de Paris pays tribute to the major masterpieces of French museums or having been painted in France.
Young Woman Blowing a Glass Pipe is a painting made by Utamaro Kitagawa in 1794. It is a woodblock print. This work is part of a series of " "Ten classes of women's physiognomy", produced between 1753 and 1806, in which Utamaro highlights the different personality traits of his models. It is part of the Ukiyo-e, or “pictures of the floating world", a Japanese artistic movement that spanned the 17th to 19th centuries. It depicts the life of models in major Japanese cities, teahouses, brothels and theatres.
The obverse depicts one of Kitagawa Utamaro's works: Young Girl Blowing into a Glass Pipe, painted in 1794. The "chefs d’œuvre des musées“ (museum masterpieces) stamp that signs all the coins in this series has been added at the top right and blends in with the work. The particularity of the 10€ Silver is that it is coloured and in the background we can distinguish the dome of the library of the Guimet museum. The name of the work, the artist and the yeardate 2023 complete the display.
The reverse is common to the series. It depicts several views of many major French museums. An interior view of the Musée d’Orsay, on the top left, is recognizable by its distinctive clock. Beside that is a view of the façade of the Louvre as seen from the Napoleon courtyard where the pyramid is located. Below these two elements, a fresco shows the Hôtel Salé, which houses the Picasso Museum. The lower portion of the reverse side features a view of the façade of Hôtel Biron, the current Rodin Museum, and above, the famous Centre Pompidou stairway. The face value and the words “République Française” are also inscribed on the reverse side.