Enseigne « Bon Logis à pied », Café du Soleil

Gustave Courbet's 1875 painting of an inn sign for the 'Bon Logis à pied' (Good Lodging on Foot) at the Café du Soleil is an unusual work from his Swiss exile period — a decorative-commercial subject rather than the landscape or political allegory with which he was associated. Inn signs were a traditional vernacular art form, and Courbet's engagement with this subject may reflect his situation in exile in La Tour-de-Peilz near Vevey, where he lived in reduced circumstances. There is also a tradition — associated with Watteau's famous Gersaint's Shop Sign — of major painters working in the sign-painting genre. The Nyon castle museum holds this curious late work as part of its documentation of Swiss regional cultural life.

The inn sign format demands a legible, declarative composition designed to be read quickly from a distance. Courbet's characteristically bold paint application would give the work vigor, even within the constraints of a commercial format. The palette and subject matter are probably simpler and more direct than his major landscape or figure works.