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.