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!”