Five Pound Piece: George IV (obverse); Shield of Arms (reverse) (1826): Art, History and Details

Five Pound Piece: George IV (obverse); Shield of Arms (reverse) (1826) is in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection. The museum's creator attribution is Jean Baptiste Merlen (French, 1769–1850).

The work and its context

The museum's open-access catalogue describes the work:

Only pattern five-pound pieces were struck during the reign of George IV, none being put into circulation. In this reign, specimen proof sets appeared for the first time in 1823, and the pattern five- and two-pound pieces as well as the pattern silver crown were included in the sets.

Object facts

• Title: Five Pound Piece: George IV (obverse); Shield of Arms (reverse)
• Date: 1826
• Creator attribution: Jean Baptiste Merlen (French, 1769–1850)
• Culture: England, George IV, 1820-1830
• Type: Coins
• Technique: gold
• Dimensions: Diameter: 3.8 cm (1 1/2 in.)
• Collection: MED - Numismatics
• Department: Medieval Art
• Accession number: 1969.215

A detail from the museum

The shield is quartered with the arms of England (1 & 4), Scotland (2), and Ireland (3) with the crowned arms of the Duchy of Brunswick and Lüneburg at the center.

Collection credit

The Norweb Collection

Further reading listed by the museum

• Cleveland Museum of Art, and Emery May Norweb. English Gold Coins, Ancient to Modern Times, On Loan to the Cleveland Museum of Art from the Norweb Collection. [Catalog. 1968.]

View the collection record

See the museum's photographs and full catalogue entry. Catalogue text is reproduced from the Cleveland Museum of Art's open-access data, with HTML formatting removed. This object and its supplied image are designated CC0.