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.
Who would have thought that Prud’hon--the artist who dwelled in
romantic dreams, and whose wonderful creation of Psyche, borne away by
loving wind-gods, lives on, a pleasant fancy in our minds--had begun
his artistic career by painting a sign for a hatter in his native
town? This, we suppose, was the first and last time that he painted
such an unpoetical thing as a hat. Like Holbein he was just fourteen
years old at the time when he produced this picture, which likewise
has come down to us; at least it still existed when the École des
Beaux-Arts in Paris arranged a Prud’hon Exhibition in 1874.
The third great artist who gained his first success by means of a sign
was Chardin. A friend of his father, a surgeon, who did not disdain to
play the barber as a side issue had given him the order. It was not
unusual for doctors to hang out a pretty sign; if they were poetically
inclined, they ventured a little rhyme on it, as shown by this Dutch
example:--
“Den Chirurgijn
Vermindert de pijn
Door Gods Genade.”
For this respect the barber and hair-dressing artists showed no less
talent, as this French verse will sufficiently prove:--
“La Nature donne barbe et cheveux
Et moi, je les coupe tous les deux.”
Well, our “chirurgien-barbier” followed the general custom of his time
and ordered a sign. Naturally he expected Chardin to paint on it all
his knives, his trepan, and other instruments of torture, and was not
a little surprised to find something very different. The proportions
of the signboard, which was very long, twelve feet long by three feet
high, had suggested to the young artist an animated composition which
he styled “les suites d’un duel dans la rue” and for which all the
members of his family had been obliged to pose as models. Only one
part of the picture, where the wounded was carried to a surgeon’s
office, referred to the business of his father’s friend. Fearing,
therefore, a possible objection on his part, the artist took the
precaution to fasten the sign in the night to the doctor’s house, who
was awakened in the morning by a big crowd assembled before it,
evidently admiring the chef d’Œuvre. Unfortunately this early work
of Chardin’s no longer exists. His paintings, so much more serious and
solid than the frivolities of Boucher and Lancret, the idols of the
public of his time, have only recently, in our democratic times,
received fully the appreciation they deserve.
But the most famous of signs painted by a great artist is without
doubt the one which Watteau, in 1720, shortly before his death, made
for the art dealer Gersaint, in three days, “to limber up his stiff
old fingers.” It is one of the most beautiful things Watteau ever
produced and is now in the possession of the German Kaiser. French
critics, however, think that it was executed by a pupil, from the
original sketch of the master, which has been found and which shows
more “loose qualities,” to use an artist’s term. However that may be,
the picture that Frederic the Great purchased through his art agent in
Paris is a beauty. A good friend of Watteau’s, a Monsieur de Julienne,
the first possessor of the sign, and owner of another painted by
Watteau for Gersaint’s art shop, entitled “Vertumnus and Pomona,” was
very proud of this new possession, as we might judge from the fact
that he asked the engraver Aveline to engrave it with this
inscription:--
“Watteau, dans cette enseigne à la fleur de ses ans
Des Maîstres de son art imite la manière;
Leurs caractères différens,
Leurs touches et leur goût composent la matière
De ces esquisses élégans.”
These words refer to a picture gallery in Gersaint’s shop which
Watteau carefully reproduces in the sign, but which to our modern eyes
is less fascinating than the elegant customers, ladies and gentlemen,
and the amusing eagerness and enthusiasm of these aristocratic
connoisseurs.
Another sign by Watteau, the loss of which we have to deplore, was the
property of a “marchande de modes.” No doubt it tempted many a
“Parisienne” to buy rather more of the charming Watteau costumes than
were strictly necessary.
A modern French artist who sometimes has been honored with the name
“Watteau Montmartrois,” the illustrator Willette, has produced in our
days the sign for the famous cabaret, the “Chat Noir” prototype of
all cabarets in France and elsewhere. Two other signs by his
master-hand, “À l’image de Notre Dame” and “À Bonaparte,” may still be
seen in Paris on the Quai Voltaire and on the corner of the Rue
Bonaparte and the Rue de l’Abbaie.
Other great French artists have painted signs occasionally: Greuze did
the “Enseigne du Huron” for a tobacco merchant--which may remind us of
the wooden Indian, guarding similar American shops in the old days;
Carle Vernet and his son Horace Vernet; Géricault, the great
sportsman, whose career as an artist was cut short by a violent fall
from a horse, is the author of the “Cheval blanc,” which once adorned
a tavern in the neighborhood of Paris; Gavarni, the great
lithographer, painted a sign, “Aux deux Pierrots,” and drew it later
on stone; Carolus Duran’s “enseigne brossée vigoureusement sur une
plaque légèrement courbée” was first exhibited in the Salon de la
Société Nationale before it was placed over the door of a
fencing-school; and many others.
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.”
[Illustration: 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!”
The amusing catalogue of this extraordinary Exhibition has been
published in full in the Appendix of Larwood and Hotten’s “History of
Signboards.” It mentions many of our old acquaintances like “The
Salutation, or French and English manners”; others are new to us, as
“The Barking Dogs,” “a landscape at moonlight, the moon somewhat
eclipsed by an accident.” The peruke-maker’s sign, “Absalom hanging,”
is again an old friend of ours. But the rhyme underneath--
“If Absalom had not worn his own hair
Absalom had not been hanging there”--
seems to us not quite equal in poetical value to the following we read
somewhere else:--
“Oh Absalom! oh Absalom!
Oh Absalom! my son,
If thou hadst worn a periwig
Thou hadst not been undone.”
Some of Hagarty’s contributions have moralizing titles--as, “The
Spirit of Contradiction,” representing two brewers with a barrel of
beer, pulling different ways--which do not amuse us any more to-day.
“The Logger-Heads,” or, “We are Three” (add: fools), is an old sign to
which Shakespeare alludes in his “Twelfth Night” (II, iii), where the
Fool comes between Sir Toby Belch and Sir Andrew Aguecheek, and,
taking each by the hand, says: “How now, my Hearts, did you never see
the picture of We Three?” In country taverns sometimes two asses were
painted on the wall, with the inscription: “We three asses.” The
newcomer used to spell these words with great seriousness, to the
delight of the old customers. Another sign by Hagarty, “Death and the
Doctor,” evidently goes back to the popular scenes of the “Dance of
Death” and reminds us of other gruesome signs, the above-mentioned
French signs, “La Mort qui trompe,” “La Fête de Mort” in Lyon and “La
Cave des Morts” in Geneva. This physician’s sign probably resembled
the rude woodcuts of the first printed editions of the “Dance of
Death” from the fifteenth century: the doctor very unwilling to follow
his colleague, “the sure Physician,” as Shakespeare has called Death.
Some such picture was in the poet’s mind when he wrote the words in
“Cymbeline,” V, v:--
“By medicine life may be prolong’d, yet death
Will seize the doctor too.”
This exhibition of Signboards inspired by Hogarth was the first and
most amusing of its kind. More than one hundred years later an
“Exposition Nationale des Enseignes parlantes artistiques” was
arranged in Brussels with one hundred and forty-one different signs,
and in 1902 the Prefet de la Seine organized in the City Hall of Paris
a great “Concours d’Enseignes.” Both represent serious and idealistic
efforts to improve the artistic side of trade-signs, and by this means
to ennoble the picture of the street so often disfigured by vulgar
advertisements. Well-known artists, as the sculptors Dervé and
Moreau-Vauthier, the painters Willette, Bellery-Desfontaines, Félix
Régamey, and the popular collaborator of “Le Rire,” Albert Guilleaume,
contributed to this exhibition and thus stimulated their colleagues to
work for the Museum of the Street. Henri Détaille, the famous painter
of battle scenes and pupil of Meissonier, was the spiritual author of
the competition. In a letter to Grand-Carteret, the writer of a great,
luxurious publication on the signs of Lyon, he had expressed the hope
to educate and refine the artistic instinct of the masses through this
medium of noble signs: “L’enseigne amusera la foule: rien n’empêche
même qu’elle soit instructive tout en restant une très pure œuvre
d’art.” He ends his letter with the following lines that give credit
to his good heart and his sympathy for the common people: “Que les
enseignes les plus belles les plus artistiques aillent surtout dans
les quartiers pauvres, populeux et privés, de toute manifestation
d’art.” If we reflect that indeed the posters often are the only
touches of brightness in the gray monotony of the poor quarters, we
will heartily join Détaille in the wish that these posters might be
pure and noble creations of art. Certain German posters, lithographed
by such artists as Cissarz, seem to approach this ideal. The recent
German War-Poster, “Gedenket Eurer Dichter und Denker,” may find an
honorable mention in this connection.
In England the advice Détaille gave to the artists “à reprendre la
tradition” has never been entirely forgotten, and even to the present
day well-known artists have not disdained to paint signs occasionally.
But before we enter the amiable society of contemporary artists we
will show due honor to the great master Grinling Gibbons, who, so to
speak, is an honorary member of the Sign-Makers’ Guild. To no visitor
of London is the name of this sculptor unfamiliar. His master-hand
carved the choir stalls in St. Paul’s Cathedral and many elaborate
wood-sculptures in royal castles. One of his works is the famous
golden cock in “Ye Olde Cock Tavern” in Fleet Street. When the old
house was torn down to make room for a branch office of the Bank of
England, the noble bird was obliged to move across the street, where
he now occupies the seat of honor in a large and rather dull room. I
am sure he would prefer to roost in the little paneled room, up
another flight, where Tennyson wrote the poem that made the creature
immortal.
[Illustration: ·THE·GOAT·IN·KENSINGTON·]
Among the living English artists who painted signs we may mention
Nicholson and Pryde, both experts in the art of the poster. Our
illustration “The Goat,” which hangs out on High Street, No. 3, in
London, is attributed to them, but even the greatest admirer of
Nicholson’s woodcuts will not find it worth while to pay a visit to
this unattractive ale-house. There is more charm in “The Rowing
Barge,” a signed work of G. D. Leslie, member of the Royal Academy, in
Wallingford on the Thames, where we found it in the neighborhood of
the old Norman Church of St. Leonhard.
It took even two Academicians, Leslie and L. E. Hodgson, to produce
the “George and Dragon” sign in Wargrave, a fascinating little place
buried amidst the greenery of giant trees. The damp climate has
effaced and darkened the sign considerably; the owner of the inn has
therefore taken it in and placed it on the garden side of the house,
under the protection of a balcony. Wargrave has a few other remarkable
signs, such as the one of the “Bull Inn,” which seems to be inspired
by the beautiful picture of young Potter.
But not the least beautiful among signs are the works of unknown
artists. All the admirable signs in forged iron, from the eighteenth
century and the beginning of the nineteenth, in southern Germany,
belong to this group. Benno Rüttenauer, to whom we are indebted in
many ways, has praised these pure works of art in an article on
“Swabian Tavern Signs”: “They are a joy to the eye and caress it as
the melody of a folk-song caresses the ear.” From what invisible
sources springs their beauty? we ask, just as we do before the great,
miraculous flowers of Gothic cathedrals rising mysteriously from the
plain cornfields of northern France. Simple artisans were their
inventors and creators, men who dared to let their own ideas grow in
the free play of glowing, flexible iron, not yet disturbed by
pattern-books and school wisdom.
More beautiful still than these are the eternal signs with which
Mother Nature, the only real teacher of all true artists, invites the
weary pilgrim to rest: the moon, the gentle shining stars, and the
blossoming trees under whose perfumed branches we sleep so sweetly.
This is the oldest inn; the Germans call it “Bei Mutter Grün,” and the
French speak similarly of “loger à l’enseigne de la lune”; “coucher à
l’enseigne de la belle étoile.” Nobody has sung the charms of this
natural inn more sweetly than the Swabian poet Uhland in his song,
“Bei einem Wirte wundermild,” which we beg permission to quote in W.
W. Skeat’s happy translation:--
“A kind and gentle host was he
With whom I stayed but now;
His sign a golden apple was
That dangled from a bough.
“Yea! ’t was a goodly apple-tree
With whom I late did rest;
With pleasant food and juices fresh
My parching mouth he blest.
“There entered in his house so green
Full many a light-winged guest;
They gaily frisked and feasted well
And blithely sang their best.
“I found a couch for sweet repose
Of yielding verdure made;
The host himself, he o’er me spread
His cool and grateful shade.
“Then asked I what I had to pay,
Whereat his head he shook;
O blest be he for evermore
From root to topmost nook!”