[CHAPTER VII]
ARTISTS AS SIGN-PAINTERS
“Ou il n’y a pas d’église je regarde les enseignes.”
Victor Hugo.
Good old Diderot, who to-day sits so peacefully in his armchair of bronze on the Boulevard Saint-Germain and observes with philosophical calm the restless stream of Parisian life passing him by day and night, was once a severe critic. We might call him the father of critics, since he reviewed the first French Art Exhibition arranged in the Salon carré of the Louvre. From this salon the modern French Expositions in Paris derive their name, although they have grown into bewildering labyrinths of art and have long ago lost the intimacy and elegance inherent in a salon. When Diderot intended to hurt the feelings of an exhibiting artist, he used to call him a “peintre d’enseigne,” and he was cruel enough to use this term rather frequently with those painters “qui ne se servent de la brosse que pour salir la toile.” In the famous encyclopædia which, together with d’Alembert, he edited in 1779, and which brought them the honorary title of “Encyclopédistes,” he gives two definitions of the French word for sign, “enseigne”: first, a flag; and second, condescendingly, “petit tableau pendu à une boutique.” As we see, the great critic did not appreciate sign-painters and their works very highly; and in this respect he only shared the general opinion of the public, which liked to poke fun at these “artistes en plein vent.”
Charlet, who usually celebrates in his lithographs the soldiers of the great Napoleon, is the author of an amusing cartoon on our poor sign-painters. “J’aime la couleur” is the title of the spirituel design which leaves us in doubt which color the sign-artist really prefers—the red on his large palette or the red of the wine in the glass he is holding.
In similar vein Hogarth represents him as a poor devil in rags and as a conceited fellow evidently very proud of his mediocre work. Like his French colleague he loves a drink in this cold, windy business of his; at least the round bottle hanging on the frame of the signboard contains to our mind, not varnish, but something in the Scotch whiskey line.
To the “Musée de la rue” his immortal works were dedicated, said a malicious Frenchman; but after all, was this really so degrading at a time when excellent artists did not hesitate to exhibit their work in the open street? Monsieur Georges Cain, the director of the Carnavalet Museum, who knows all the “Coins de Paris” so well and with whom it is so entertaining to promenade “à travers Paris,” tells us that in the days before the Revolution the young artists who were not yet members of the official academies used to show their paintings on the Place Dauphine, once situated behind the Palais de Justice. If Jupiter Pluvius did not interfere, the exhibition was arranged on the day of the “petite Fête-Dieu.” Great linen sheets were pinned over the shop-windows and formed the background for paintings of such eminent artists as Oudry, Boucher, Nattier, or Chardin, works of art which to-day are considered treasures of the Louvre, as “La Raie,” exhibited by Chardin for the first time in 1728 in this museum of the street. “Quel joli spectacle,” says Cain in his “Coins de Paris,” “devaient offrir la place Dauphine, les façades roses des deux maisons d’angle et le vieux Pont-Neuf—décor exquis, pittoresque et charmeur—encombrés d’amateurs, de badauds, de critiques, de belles dames, d’artistes, d’aimables modèles en claire toilette, se pressant affairés, babillards, enthousiastes, joyeux, par une douce matinée de mai, devant les toiles fraîches écloses des Petits Exposants de la Place Dauphine!”
Our respect for the “artistes en plein vent” can but increase, when we hear that three famous painters have begun their career with the composition of a sign: Holbein, Prud’hon, and Chardin. All kinds of tavern anecdotes are in circulation regarding Holbein, who was rather a gay bird in his youth. According to one of them he once got so tired of painting the decoration of a tavern room that he concluded to deceive the landlord, watching eagerly his work, by counterfeiting himself standing on a scaffold before the wall busily engaged in his work. Thus he was able to skip out and have a good time in another tavern, while the good landlord, every time he looked through the door, was pleased to see him ever diligently working. One of Holbein’s earliest works was a sign for a pedagogue representing a schoolroom; this is still preserved in the Museum at Basle.