Richard Wilson, an earlier than Morland, fought a losing fight as a landscape painter, and “by Britain left in poverty to pine,” at last died in 1782. Classic landscape in the manner of Claude was not then appreciated, and the unfortunate painter sold principally to pawnbrokers, at wretched prices, until even they grew tired of backing him. He lived and died neglected, and had to wait for Fame, as “Peter Pindar,” that shrewdest and best of art-critics, foretold,
Till thou hast been dead a hundred year.
He painted at least one inn-sign: that of the “Loggerheads” at Llanverris, in Denbighshire; a picture representing two jovial, and not too intellectual, grinning faces, with the inscription, “We Three Loggerheads Be.” The fame of this sign was once so great that the very name of the village itself became obscured, and the place was commonly known as “Loggerheads.” Wilson’s work was long since repainted.
But what is a “loggerhead,” and why should the two grinning faces of the sign have been described as “three”? The origin of the term is, like the birth of Jeames de la Pluche, “wrop in mistry”; but of the meaning of it there is little doubt. A “loggerhead” is anything you please in the dunderhead, silly fool, perfect ass, or complete idiot way, and the gaping stranger who looks inquisitively at the two loggerheads on the sign-board automatically constitutes himself the third, and thus completes the company. It is a kind of small-beer, fine-drawn jape that has from time immemorial passed for wit in rustic parts, and may be traced even in the pages of Shakespeare, where, in Act II. Scene 2 of Twelfth Night, it is the subject of allusion as the picture of “We Three.”
The “Mortal Man” at Troutbeck, in the Lake district, once possessed a pictorial sign, painted by Julius Cæsar Ibbetson, a gifted but dissolute artist, friend of, and kindred spirit with, Morland. It represented two faces, the one melancholy, pallid and thin, the other hearty, good-humoured, and “ruddier than the cherry.” Beneath these two countenances was inscribed a verse attributed to Thomas Hoggart, a local wit, uncle of Hogarth, the painter:
“Thou mortal man, that liv’st by bread,
What makes thy face to look so red?”
“Thou silly fop, that look’st so pale,
’Tis red with Tony Burchett’s ale.”
First went the heads, and at last the verses also, and to-day the “Mortal Man” has only a plain sign.
John Crome, founder of the “Norwich School” of artists, known as “Old” Crome, in order to distinguish him from his son, contributed to this list of signs painted by artists. It is not surprising that he should have done so, seeing that he won to distinction from the very lowest rungs of the ladder; leaving, as a boy, the occupation of running errands for a doctor, and commencing art in 1783 as apprentice to a coach-, house-, and sign-painter. One work of his of this period is the “Sawyers” sign. It is now preserved at the Anchor Brewery, Pockthorpe, Norwich. Representing a saw-pit, with two sawyers at work, it shows the full-length figure of the top-sawyer and the head and shoulders of the other. It is, however, a very inferior and fumbling piece of work, and its interest is wholly sentimental.
J. F. Herring, afterwards famous for his paintings of horses and farmyard scenes, began as a coach-painter and sign-board artist at Doncaster, in 1814. He painted at least twelve inn-signs in that town, but they have long since become things of the past.
Charles Herring never reached the heights of fame scaled by his brother, and long painted signs for a great firm of London brewers.