The E-Sylum:  Volume 5, Number 40, October 6, 2002, Article 10

GOBRECHT'S INSPIRATION

  In response to last week's note about Christian Gobrecht's
  inspiration for his Liberty design , David Lange of NGC
  writes:  "This text was taken from NGC's Photo Proof series.
  These histories accompany photographs that NGC takes of
  coins submitted for that purpose.  A customized analysis of
  the particular specimen submitted is also included, though
  the generic history is the same for all coins of that
  denomination and type.

  The information regarding the source of Gobrecht's Liberty
  profile was taken from Walter Breen's 1988 encyclopedia,
  page 548. It's not known to me whether Breen was
  referencing someone else's conclusion or making his own
  interpretation upon having viewed the painting.  I'm certain
  that a web search on Benjamin West would turn up one or
  more sites at which the painting Omnia Vincit Amor may be
  viewed. Cornelius Vermeule, in his book Numismatic Art in
  America, does not reference this particular artwork.  Instead,
  he furnishes samples of other vintage pieces as being typical
  of the classical art upon which engravers of the time based
  their portraits.

  In recent years NGC has made its Photo Proof series of
  histories and photographs available to various businesses
  and institutions for use in developing their websites and for
  advertising purposes. The articles are published without
  bylines, sometimes acknowledging NGC and other times
  not. Now that they've gotten into cyberspace, I never know
  where they'll turn up."

  [As the former search engine product manager, I'm pretty
  good at finding things with focused search terms.   One
  good technique is to imagine the web page you're looking
  for, and think about what words might be on it -- in particular,
  words or phrases that would appear there and no where else.
  "Omnia Vincit Amor" together with "Benjamin West" appear
  only on a couple dozen of the millions of pages on the web.
  Many of these are versions of the Christian Gobrecht story,
  and others do not apply to this Benjamin West.   A page
  referencing this particular West painting does not seem to exist,
  but if anyone can find one I'd love to hear about it.  The next
  step would have to be offline - a check of a catalog rasisonne
  of West's work should locate the painting, if indeed it exists.
  One never really knows where Walter got some of this stuff.
  -Editor]

  Wayne Homren, Editor

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