1839 50C Liberty Seated Half Dollar, No Drapery PCGS MS64

Many collectors consider the Seated Liberty design to have been crafted solely by Christian Gobrecht. However, it was a collaboration of several hands and minds before it appeared on the half dollar and other coins. It was U.S. Mint Director Robert B. Patterson, who, in 1835, was desirous of a new coin that was reminiscent of Britannia on British copper, or images of Liberty from the French Revolution. Artist Thomas Sully was tasked with crafting a rendering of Liberty based on a set of British coins and medals. Then Sully's work was given to the newly hired engraver, Christian Gobrecht, who created a series of drawings before producing a copper die for study and presentation in Washington, D.C. When the new half dollars were produced, starting in 1839, they had an updated reverse that was a freshly engraved version of John Reich's 1807 half dollar eagle reverse design--sans the motto and ribbon. The obverse design that debuted on the half dollar in 1839 was a modification of the Seated Liberty that first appeared on the "Gobrecht dollar" of 1836.

Numismatic scholar and art historian Cornelius Vermeule gives us an original and tongue-in-cheek interpretation of the Seated Liberty design found on the 1839 half dollar. He writes, "Despite the relationship with Greek and Roman forms, the seated Liberty ... is a thoroughly American creation of the age .... The long nose, the large eye (like that of a baby chicken), the hair combed not back but across the temples in a loop like that worn by the young Queen Victoria, and the rubbery physique are characteristics of neoclassical heroines in American paintings of these decades .... Clutching her ridiculous little hat on a pole and the small shield nestling in the drapery at her side, Liberty looks anxiously over her shoulder as if a horde of Indians were sprinting ... toward her."