Jacques-Jean Barre

Jacques-Jean Barre was a French artist, born on August 3, 1793 in Paris, where he died on June 10, 1855. Engraver general of coins at the Monnaie de Paris from 1843 to 1855, he was responsible for the great seal of France and the country's first two series of postage stamps.

The order of his first names varies according to the publication: Jean-Jacques Barre in numismatics and Jacques-Jean Barre in philately.

Barre joined the Monnaie de Paris as an engraver around 1810. After the death of Nicolas-Pierre Tiolier in 1842, he succeeded him as general engraver of coins3. King Louis-Philippe I commissioned him to produce large plaster medallion portraits of the numerous members of the royal family.

Under the Second Republic, he was commissioned to design and supervise the engraving of the 1842 500 and 1,000 franc banknotes. In 1848, he created the matrix for the new Great Seal of the Republic and the seal of the National Assembly. He also designed and engraved France's first postage stamps, featuring Ceres and Napoleon III (Presidency and Empire), which were printed at the Hôtel de la Monnaie by Anatole Hulot until 1876.