Among the French sculptors Jean Goujon, perhaps the greatest of them, the creator of the Fontaine des Innocents in Paris and its charmingly graceful figures, is mentioned as the author of a sign, “La chaste Suzanne,” which once embellished a house in the Rue aux Fêves. To-day a plaster cast has been substituted for the original, bought by an art collector. In the old streets of Paris we may still discover here and there sculptured signs of artistic charm, such as “La Fontaine de Jouvence” in the Rue de Four Saint-Germain, 67, and the fine relief of the “Soleil d’or” in the Rue Saint-Sauveur. The little Bacchus riding so gayly on a cask, who once decorated the “Cabaret du Lapin blanc,” spends to-day a rather dull existence, together with other retired colleagues of his, in the Musée Carnavalet. Our little “Rémouleur,” from the Rue des Nonains d’Hyères, who does not fail to amply moisten his grindstone, is not only a suggestive symbol, but in his dainty rococo dress a very amusing piece of sculpture.
We cannot end our chat on signs by French artists without mentioning the name of Victor Hugo, to whom we owe so much information about the wealth of signs that still existed at his time in France and the countries bordering on the Rhine. He was himself a clever draughtsman and occasionally sketched “des dessins aux enseignes enchevêtrées,” reminiscences of the real signs he used to admire on his wanderings. The following quotation may show how great was his love for signs: “À Rhinfelden, les exubérantes enseignes d’auberge m’ont occupé comme des cathédrales; et j’ai l’esprit fait ainsi, qu’ à de certains moments un étang de village, clair comme un miroir d’acier, entouré de chaumières et traversé par une flotille de canards me régale autant que le lac de Genève.”
Enseigne du Rémouleur·Paris
Among the great Dutch masters Paulus Potter, Albert Cuyp, and Wouwerman are cited as occasional sign-painters. Even Potter’s famous “Jonge Stier” in The Hague is claimed as a butcher’s sign. It would perhaps seem like doing too much honor to the art of sign-painting if we numbered this remarkable work of the twenty-two-year-old artist among them. And what beautiful white horses, bathed in mellow sunlight, Cuyp may have painted for the “Rössle” taverns! Another Dutch artist, Laurens van der Vinne (1629-1702), is even called the Raphael among sign-painters. We do not know much about his work, but I am afraid he did not take this title as a compliment.
To find Rembrandt’s great name in connection with our art seems stranger still, but there is a tradition that copies of his pictures—we may think of his good Samaritan arriving with the wounded man before an inn—were used as signs. As we shall see later, his own portrait was occasionally hung out by a patriotic and art-loving landlord over the tavern door.
Among English artists Hogarth, whom we already know as a keen observer of London signs, deserves the first place. He is supposed to be the author of a sign, not very gallant to the fair sex, called “A man loaded with mischief.” It represents a wife-ridden man. All kinds of delicate allusions hidden in the background of the composition seem to hint at the sad fact that this impudent woman on his back holding a glass of gin gets sometimes “drunk as a sow.” I doubt if Hogarth engraved this plate himself; it is signed “Sorrow” as the engraver and “Experience” as the designer. It would do little honor either to Hogarth the man or the artist.
All satirical art has this great deficiency, that it is hard for the public to judge whether the satire means to combat seriously the vices and errors of men or whether the smile of the satirist is not a smile of complacency. But such doubts must not detain us from visiting with good humor an exhibition of signs, the spiritual promoter of which Hogarth seems to have been. At any rate, he contributed quite a few of his own works under the transparent pseudonym “Hagarty.”
Bonnell Thornton, who, after a brilliant journalistic career as editor of “The Connoisseur,” “The St. James’s Chronicle,” and other publications, received the greatest honor accorded to Englishmen, a final abode in Westminster Abbey, was the originator of this curious exhibition. Hogarth was at least on the “hanging committee.” The fact that the gates of the Signboard Exhibition were opened in the spring of 1762, at the same time as the official Exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts, provoked the anger of the “Brother Artists” and was the signal for a perfect storm among the newspapers. Furious articles stigmatized the enterprise as “the most impudent and pickpocket Abuse that I ever knew offered to the Publick.” “The best entertainment it can afford is that of standing in the street, and observing with how much shame in their Faces People come out of the House. Pity it will be, if all who are employed in the carrying on this Cheat, are not seized and sent to serve the King.” In those days, “to serve the King” was evidently a severe punishment. The sign-painters in their turn hurried to protest their innocence and to refute “the most malicious suggestion that their Exhibition is designed as a Ridicule on the Exhibition of the Society for the Encouragement of Arts. They are not in the least prompted by any mean Jealousie to depreciate the Merits of their Brother Artists, ... their sole View is to convince Foreigners, as well as their own blinded Countrymen, that however inferior this Nation may be unjustly deemed in other Branches of the Polite Arts, the Palm of Sign-Painting must be universally ceded to Us, the Dutch themselves not excepted.” The committee even reprinted the articles and letters abusive of the Exhibition, “thanking the critics for so successfully advertising their efforts.”
No doubt, this exposition was a rare treat. Not only were all the painted signs “worse executed than any that are to be seen in the meanest streets, and the carved Figures,” as one of the curious who visited the show tells us, “the very worst of Signpost Work, but several Tobacco Rolls, Sugar Loaves, Hats, Wigs, Stockings and Gloves, and even a Westphalian Ham hung round the room.” “The Cream of the whole Jest,” or, as the French would say, the “clou de l’exposition,” were two boards behind blue curtains with the warning inscription: “Ladies and gentlemen are requested not to finger them, as blue curtains are hung over in purpose to preserve them.” Since it was the custom in those days to hide pictures of too indelicate a nature in this fashion, the ladies, of course, did not dare to gratify their curiosity. But lascivious gentlemen who did not hesitate to lift the curtains found only the mocking words: “Ha! Ha! Ha!” and “He! He! He!”