Old Tavern Signs Part 7

"Ou il n'y a pas d'eglise 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 pa.s.sing 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 carre 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 encyclopaedia which, together with d'Alembert, he edited in 1779, and which brought them the honorary t.i.tle of "Encyclopedistes," he gives two definitions of the French word for sign, "enseigne": first, a flag; and second, condescendingly, "pet.i.t tableau pendu a 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 t.i.tle 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 gla.s.s 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 "Musee 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 "a 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 "pet.i.te Fete-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 facades roses des deux maisons d'angle et le vieux Pont-Neuf--decor exquis, pittoresque et charmeur--encombres d'amateurs, de badauds, de critiques, de belles dames, d'artistes, d'aimables modeles en claire toilette, se pressant affaires, babillards, enthousiastes, joyeux, par une douce matinee de mai, devant les toiles fraiches ecloses des Pet.i.ts 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-G.o.ds, 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 ecole 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 G.o.ds 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 a.s.sembled before it, evidently admiring the chef d'uvre. 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, ent.i.tled "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 a la fleur de ses ans Des Maistres de son art imite la maniere; Leurs caracteres differens, Leurs touches et leur got composent la matiere De ces esquisses elegans."

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 ill.u.s.trator 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, "a l'image de Notre Dame" and "a 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; Gericault, 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 brossee vigoureus.e.m.e.nt sur une plaque legerement courbee" was first exhibited in the Salon de la Societe 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 Feves. To-day a plaster cast has been subst.i.tuted 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 Musee Carnavalet. Our little "Remouleur,"

from the Rue des Nonains d'Hyeres, 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 enchevetrees,"

reminiscences of the real signs he used to admire on his wanderings.

The following quotation may show how great was his love for signs: "a Rhinfelden, les exuberantes enseignes d'auberge m'ont occupe comme des cathedrales; et j'ai l'esprit fait ainsi, qu' a de certains moments un etang de village, clair comme un miroir d'acier, entoure de chaumieres et traverse par une flotille de canards me regale autant que le lac de Geneve."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Enseigne du RemouleurParis]

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 "Rossle" 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 t.i.tle 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 s.e.x, 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 gla.s.s 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 fas.h.i.+on, 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 t.i.tles--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 a.s.ses were painted on the wall, with the inscription: "We three a.s.ses." 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 Fete 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 enn.o.ble the picture of the street so often disfigured by vulgar advertis.e.m.e.nts. Well-known artists, as the sculptors Derve and Moreau-Vauthier, the painters Willette, Bellery-Desfontaines, Felix Regamey, 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 Detaille, the famous painter of battle scenes and pupil of Meissonier, was the spiritual author of the compet.i.tion. 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 ma.s.ses through this medium of n.o.ble signs: "L'enseigne amusera la foule: rien n'empeche meme qu'elle soit instructive tout en restant une tres pure uvre 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 prives, 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 Detaille in the wish that these posters might be pure and n.o.ble 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 Detaille gave to the artists "a 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 c.o.c.k in "Ye Olde c.o.c.k Tavern" in Fleet Street. When the old house was torn down to make room for a branch office of the Bank of England, the n.o.ble 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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THEGOATINKENSINGTON]

Among the living English artists who painted signs we may mention Nicholson and Pryde, both experts in the art of the poster. Our ill.u.s.tration "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 Ruttenauer, 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 s.h.i.+ning stars, and the blossoming trees under whose perfumed branches we sleep so sweetly.

This is the oldest inn; the Germans call it "Bei Mutter Grun," and the French speak similarly of "loger a l'enseigne de la lune"; "coucher a l'enseigne de la belle etoile." n.o.body 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.