West also painted the “Ale Bearers.” One side had a man holding a glass of ale and looking through it. The other side showed two brewers’ porters carrying an ale cask slung with case hooks on a pole—as was the way of ale porters at that day. It is said that West was offered five hundred dollars for a red lion sign-board he had painted in his youth. In the vicinity of Philadelphia several taverns claimed to have sign-boards painted by the Peales and by Gilbert Stuart, and an artist named Hicks is said to have contributed some wonderful specimens to this field of art.
Browne’s Hall, Danvers, Massachusetts, 1743.
General Wolfe was a favorite name and figure for pre-Revolutionary taverns and sign-boards. There was a Wolfe Tavern near Faneuil Hall in Boston; and the faded sign-board of the Wolfe Tavern of Brooklyn, Connecticut, is shown on [page 211] as it swung when General Israel Putnam was the tavern landlord. These figures of the English officer were usually removed as obnoxious after the Declaration of Independence. But the Wolfe Tavern at Newburyport continued to swing the old sign “in the very centre of the place to be an insult to this truly republican town.” This sign is shown in its spruce freshness on [page 180]. It is a great contrast to “Old Put’s” Wolfe sign-board.
A Philadelphia tavern with a clumsy name, though a significant one, was the Federal Convention of 1787 Inn. I cannot imagine any band of tavern tipplers or jovial roisterers ever meeting there, but it was doubtless used for political gatherings. It had a most pretentious sign painted by Matthew Pratt, a pupil of Benjamin West. It was said that his signs were painted in a style that should have given them place in a picture gallery, had it not been that the galleries of those days were few, and artists found their most lucrative employment in painting signs for taverns and stores. This inn kept first by a man named Hanna, then by George Poppal, was at 178 South Street, near Fifth Street. The sign was a painting of the National Convention which met May 14, 1787, in the State House or Independence Hall to frame the Constitution of the United States. George Washington was president, Mayor William Jackson was secretary. The convention met in the East Room, which was distinctly and correctly represented on the sign-board; its wainscoting, the Ionic pilasters supporting a full entablature beneath a coved ceiling, all were taken down by a “Commissioner of Repairs,” and all now are happily reproduced and restored. On one side of the sign-board Washington was seen seated under the panel bearing the arms of Pennsylvania. The dignified Judge Wilson occupied the chair, and Franklin sat near. All the heads were portraits. On both sides of the sign-board were the lines:—
“These thirty-eight men together have agreed
That better times to us shall very soon succeed.”
Watson, writing in 1857, tells of the end of this historic sign-board:—
“This invaluable sign, which should have been copied by some eminent artist and engraved for posterity, was bandied about like the Casa Santa of Lorretto from post to pillar till it located at South Street near the Old Theatre. The figures are now completely obliterated by a heavy coat of brown paint on which is lettered Fed. Con. 1787.”
Hat Tavern and Sign-board.