Camouflage Cultures Conference in Sydney

Above This is an amazing poster, published in Australia (c1918) during World War I. It is a promotional poster for the wartime Peace Loan program, which makes use of an Australian ship, the rear half of which is painted in striped dazzle camouflage, while the front half is not. Below the ship is the caption "unmasking." A print of the original poster is in the National Museum of Australia, Australian War Memorial, ART V00010.

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As noted in an earlier post, the Sydney College of the Arts (SCA) will host an international conference and exhibition on that campus on August 8 through August 11, 2013. Titled Camouflage Cultures: Surveillance, Communities, Aesthetics, Animals, it was initiated and organized by SCA faculty members Ann Elias and Nicholas Tsoutas. The slate of events is unusually diverse in the cross-disciplinary breadth of its presentations. See ad below. Details and a complete list of presentations are online here.

Ghost Army Camouflage Film on PBS

Premiering late May 2013 on PBS television

At last, coming soon to public television (Tuesday, May 21 on most PBS channels) is Rick Beyer's long-awaited documentary on the World War II American Army camouflage and deception unit, The Ghost Army. Below is a background starter, but the website has much more—

In June 1944, a secret US Army unit went into action in Normandy. The weapons they deployed were decidedly unusual: hundreds of inflatable tanks and a one-of-a-kind collection of sound effects records. Their mission was to use bluff, deception, and trickery to save lives. Many were artists, some of who would become famous, including a budding fashion designer named Bill Blass. They painted and sketched their way across Europe, creating a unique visual record of their journey. The story of what these men accomplished was hushed up by the Pentagon for more than forty years. more>>>

Camouflage Cultures | 2013 Conference

Bruce Bairnsfather, Fragments from France (1916)

Figure disruption (as shown above in one of Bruce Bairnsfather's famous World War I cartoons) is one of a rich range of topics explored at an upcoming conference and exhibition on camouflage at the Sydney College of the Arts, the University of Sydney, Australia, August 8-11, 2013. Here is a conference overview—

CAMOUFLAGE CULTURES: SURVEILLANCE, COMMUNITIES, AESTHETICS, ANIMALS: An international conference and exhibition co-convened and co-curated by Ann Elias and Nicholas Tsoutas

Rich in history, aesthetic possibilities, political suggestion, and metaphor, camouflage also expresses the spirit of contemporary life. Strategies and acts of blending, assimilation, invisibility, disruption, mimicry, and masking proliferate today in art, war, and society. Camouflage’s diverse contexts include surveillance, fashion, and nature. It crosses boundaries of human and animal, traverses disciplines of military science, biology, anthropology and sociology. And at the intersections of disciplines it provokes innovative thought and practice. Camouflage is inseparable from the histories of science and art, but in addition it represents a powerful conceptual tool for negotiating everyday life and politics in the 21st century.

The conference and exhibition address two key principles of camouflage—concealment and deception—in relation to four themes: surveillance, communities, aesthetics, and animals. The theme of "surveillance" includes war, defense, militaries, and conflict; "communities" embraces society, the everyday, government, and identity; "aesthetics" incorporates art, architecture, film, and popular culture; "animals" includes human and non-human beings, nature, evolution, pattern, and optics.

The conference and exhibition offer an exciting range of interpretations and understandings, research and investigation into the subject of camouflage and in relation to visual representation and the contemporary world. The event showcases the work of staff from the SCA and other leading national and international artists, academics and writers.

For a detailed schedule of events and information on how to register, click here.

Cécile Coutin on WWI French Camouflage

Today we ordered a copy (sight unseen) of a recent book (the text is completely in French) by French art historian Cécile Coutin, titled Tromper l'ennemi: L'invention du camouflage moderne en 1914-1918. Paris: Éditions Pierre de Taillac, 2012, 240 pp. Coutin, who is the chief conservator at the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF), has researched art and camouflage for many years. Her earlier findings were published in a three-part article titled "Les Artistes de La Guerre: Le Camouflage Pendant La Première Guerre Mondiale" in Historiens-Géographes. Nos 321 (December 1988) and 322 (March-April 1989). This new book (which again, I haven't actually seen) appears to be the grand result of her patient pursuit of this subject. It is illustrated by 300 drawings, paintings, photographs and other documents from historic archives. The cover, reproduced above, shows three French soldiers (presumably camoufleurs) testing a steel-lined artificial tree (constructed in sections, with a ladder inside), used as a battlefield observation post. Other portions of the book can be viewed online here.

RISD Scholar Claudia Covert on Camouflage

SS Mauretania in New York harbor on December 1, 1918

Above This is the most amazing photograph of a famous example of World War I dazzle ship camouflage. It's a US Signal Corps photograph of the British SS Mauretania (sister ship of the Lusitania), a 31,938-ton Cunard ship after its arrival at New York harbor on December 1, 1918. It was bringing home from France 5,000 American troops, among them 1,100 wounded.
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Last October, we (at the University of Northern Iowa) excitedly looked forward to a visiting lecture on our campus by Claudia Covert, a research scholar and Readers' Services Librarian at the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design. Regrettably, Hurricane Sandy decided to visit Providence that same week, with the result that the lecture had to be rescheduled. It will now take place later this month, at 11:00 am on Saturday, April 27, 2012, in Room 111 of the Kamerick Art Building. 

Her talk will be one of two keynote events, along with other presentations and panels, that are part of a two-day symposium at UNI called ENVISIONING DESIGN: Education, Culture, Practice. The gathering (which is free and open to the public) begins at 5:00 pm on Friday, April 26, and concludes at 4:00 pm the following day. A detailed schedule of events is now available online here.

Claudia Covert's lecture is a richly illustrated presentation on the bizarre, colorful camouflage patterns applied to Allied ships in World War I. RISD has a collection of 455 color lithographic plans of "dazzle camouflage" ship designs, which she has extensively researched and written about. In her presentation, she will talk about her findings, the function of this odd approach to camouflage, and the role of designers and artists in devising these deceptive schemes.

[By the way, from 4:00 pm Friday through Sunday, parking is open on campus.]

Conference logo designed by Kimberly Breuer

Important Thayer Camouflage Exhibit

Title slide of talk at National Sporting Library & Museum

What a weekend it was. Mary and I have just returned from a quick trip to Washington DC, to attend an exhibition called Abbott Handerson Thayer: A Beautiful Law of Nature, on view now through May 26, 2013, at the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg VA. It is a "must see" installation for anyone with an interest in this turn-of-the-century master, whose early revelations about protective coloration in animals led to his being referred to as the "father of camouflage." Although a comparatively small selection (there are two rooms filled with original work), it is an undoubtedly groundbreaking event, in part because it focuses on his contributions to camouflage, and because so very few of these works have ever been on public view.

This exhibit came about through the collaborative efforts of the Curator of the NSL Museum Claudia Pfeiffer (whose efficiency was astonishing), the Gold Leaf Studios (framing expert William Adair and his able associate Ari Post), and the Abbott H. Thayer Estate and Family.

(l-r) Claudia Pfeiffer, Roy Behrens and Ari Post

Above is a photograph of (l to r) Claudia, myself and Ari discussing aspects of the installation. In addition to seeing Thayer's work (most of which I myself had never seen reproductions of, much less the genuine pieces), along with other works of art in concurrent exhibitions there, I was privileged to speak about "Abbott H. Thayer and the Uncloaking of Camouflage" on Saturday.

In an earlier blog post, I have already shared information about the contents and availability of Gold Leaf Studio's full-color exhibition catalog, which reproduces many of the works, and is supplemented by exhibition essays by UK zoologist Martin Stevens, American art historian William Kloss, myself, and Ari Post.

(l-r) Jean Reasoner Plunket, John Plunket and Roy Behrens

The exhibition and lecture opportunity were reason enough to make this a pleasurable, memorable journey. But there were two other highlights as well: First, we were able to spend several hours with owner Bill Adair at the Gold Leaf Studios, whose working space and cache of historic surprises were both eye-popping and mind-boggling (we could easily have snooped around for a entire week). And then (and this I'll never forget) we had the unexpected luck to be able to visit briefly with Abbott Thayer's granddaughter (portrait artist Jean Reasoner Plunket). Although we had never met, she and I had "co-starred" in the only film on Thayer's life, titled Invisible: Abbott Thayer and the Art of Camouflage. This delightful meeting was arranged by her son, Thayer's great-grandson, John Plunket, with whom we were able to talk extensively.

What a whirlwind trip it was. I am exhausted—if pleasantly so.

Camouflage Artist | Fritz Kleesattel

Vintage ad for Camel cigarettes (1940s)

 Fred Otto Kleesattel, better known as “Fritz” Kleesattel, was an American advertising artist who was born on July 10, 1889, in Cincinnati, Ohio. After studying at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, he worked as a graphic designer in Louisville, Kentucky, where he established a studio called Klee Ad Art.

His most memorable undertaking occurred in 1913, when he was commissioned by the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to create the packaging for Camel cigarettes. It was Kleesattel who designed the Camel in the logo. It is said that he also contributed to the design of various labels for Four Roses Kentucky Straight Bourbon, Heaven Hill Distilleries, and other corporate clients.

After the US entered World War I, Kleesattel enlisted in the American Army and was assigned to the camouflage training unit at Camp Sherman in Ohio. As a camoufleur with the rank of Sergeant, he was an assistant to Indiana-born camouflage artist and patent attorney Joseph Allen Minturn (1861-1943), who later wrote a book about his wartime experiences, titled The American Spirit (1921). In that memoir, Minturn (who mistakenly refers to him as “Kleesatelle”) recalls that Kleesattel was admired in the camp for his “conversion of a conspicuous latrine into a pen of mules,” one of which “had his head, made of painted tin, projecting out between the two top boards in such a natural way that his ears flapped in the wind, and Major Arthur Robinson declared it so fooled his favorite saddle mare that she neighed to it when he rode up one day to get a close view of the penned animals” (p. 97). Later, his and Minturn’s unit served overseas in France.

Kleesattel died in Louisville on January 16, 1965.

Sources

Joseph Allen Minturn, The American Spirit. Indianapolis IN: Globe Publishing, 1921.

Anon, “Camel (cigarette)” on Wikipedia at <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camel_(cigarette)>.

Abbott H. Thayer | Exhibition Catalog

Cover of Thayer exhibition catalog (2013)

I feel very fortunate to have been able to contribute the introduction to the full-color catalog for a current exhibition about the camouflage-related work of American painter Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921). The richly-illustrated catalog, titled Abbott Handerson Thayer: A Beautiful Law of Nature, has just been published by Gold Leaf Studios in Washington DC, and can now be purchased online, either as a printed softbound book or a pdf download. It was edited and designed by Ari Post who is the Project and Exhibits Manager at Gold Leaf Studios.

Inside its pages are nearly fifty reproductions of rarely-seen art works and other artifacts by Thayer, whose research of animal coloration led to his popular designation (in news accounts) as the "father of camouflage." In 1949, his family gave to the Smithsonian Institution about one hundred items, many of which were his experimental studies of both natural and military camouflage. Fortunately, these priceless research artifacts have survived all these years, but the majority of them have never been exhibited publicly nor even reproduced in books. As the examples in this catalog show, this seemingly small exhibition is in truth a potentially major event. And it's something we can all share, because the current exhibition is at the National Sporting Library and Museum in Middleburg VA, a short drive from the nation's capital. The exhibit opened recently, on February 1, and continues through May 26, 2013.

Interior page spread

In addition to my introduction, the catalog also offers an insightful discussion of Thayer as an observer of nature by a prominent British zoologist, Martin Stevens (recently co-editor of a pivotal book, titled Animal Camouflage: Mechanisms and Function), and a thoughtful essay on Thayer's work as an artist and its significance by art historian William Kloss, a well-known authority on European and American art.

Interior page spread

There are several other sections of equal fascination (also written by Ari Post), including one on Thayer's grasp of the "laws of nature," his attempts to design military camouflage (both soldiers' uniforms and disruptive ship camouflage), his insatiable interest in the appearance of animals, and (appropriately, given the role of Gold Leaf Studios in enabling this event) the principles by which exquisitely suitable frames are designed for the paintings of someone of Thayer's achievement.

Models by Jim Baumann & Wolfgang Kring

Model of the HMS Furious © Jim Baumann

Some time ago, in earlier posts, we featured the amazing work of two ship modelers, Jim Baumann (from the UK) and Wolfgang Kring (from Germany). They have since supplied us with other examples of models bearing camouflage. Above (bottom) is a photo of the port side of Baumann's model of the HMS Furious, as dazzle-painted during World War I. Above that is a contemporaneous photograph of the opposite side of the same ship. Although there are some color photographs from those years and even before, there are no color photographs of camouflaged ships.

The photos below are details of a model by Wolfgang Kring of a bizarre WWII camouflage plan that was applied to the German battleship the Tirpitz while it was being fitted out at the Kriegsmarine Werft, at Wilhelmshaven, Germany (c1939). Positioned in front of a section of buildings, the ship's camouflage was an attempt at mimicry—it was painted to resemble the brick walls, windows, doors and other features of the buildings behind it.

Model of the Tirpitz © Wolfgang Kring

Camouflage Artist | Gerome Brush

Sherry Fry, Portrait Bust of Gerome Brush (c1910)

Gerome Brush (informally referred to as “Gerry” or “Jerry”) was born in New York on March 11, 1888. His father was a well-known American painter, George de Forest Brush, while his mother, Mittie Taylor Brush, was a sculptor, inventor and pioneering aviator. He is sometimes mistakenly cited as “Jerome” Brush, but his actual name was Gerome, a tribute to French painter Jean-Léon Gérome, his father’s famous teacher at the Écoles des Beaux-Arts. 

Much of what is known about Brush and his family members, as well as others who were part of the artists colony in Dublin, New Hamphire (where the family spent their summers), is due to the efforts of his sister, Nancy Douglas Bowditch (née Nancy Brush), who wrote a memoir of her father, titled George de Forest Brush: Recollections of a Joyous Painter (1970). Later, she also donated her papers to the Archives of American Art, including two interviews in which she talked at length about her parents, her siblings, friends and others. 

Gerome Brush learned about painting and sculpture from his father, and by working with others in Europe and the US. Among his early influences was the painter Abbott Handerson Thayer, who was a lifelong friend of his father, as well as their neighbor in Dublin. Although somewhat younger, Gerome was in close contact with other young artists who studied and lived in the vicinity of Dublin, Keene and Cornish (location of the studio of Augustus Saint-Gaudens), New Hampshire, among them muralist Barry Faulkner, sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry, and painter-naturalist Gerald Thayer (Abbott Thayer’s son). Bird artist and naturalist Louis Agassiz Fuertes (a Thayer student and devotee) was a frequent and favorite visitor to the Brush family’s summer home. 

In Dublin, among the Brushes’ neighbors was Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain), whose youngest daughter Jean was prone to terrible seizures. Among Jean Clemens’ closest friends was Nancy Brush, and entries from Jean’s diary from 1906 confirm her romantic interest in Gerome Brush. But nothing came of it, and three years later, while no longer living in Dublin, Jean died, apparently during a seizure, while taking a bath. 

In the early 1890s, Abbott Thayer had begun to write about the survival advantage of protective coloration (or animal camouflage), and in 1898, coincident with the Spanish-American War, he and George de Forest Brush approached the US Navy with a proposal for camouflaging ships. Apparently precocious, the young Gerome Brush was also involved in this research, and in 1902, at the age of only fourteen, he and Abbott Thayer were jointly granted a patent for a “Process of Treating the Outside of Ships, etc., For Making Them Less Visible” (U.S. Patent No. 715013). The Spanish-American War having ended in 1898, the same year it began, there was no on-going conflict, and camouflage was not an urgent concern. 

In 1913, Gerome Brush married a New York actress named Louise Seymour. According to his sister Nancy, Gerome “who was beginning to make a name for himself as a sculptor, had also become interested in working at a settlement house there [in New York]—coaching boys in a dramatic club—and thus he met Louise, who was occupied in the same work.” In celebration of the marriage, Gerome’s parents took the newlywed couple and the Brushes’ several daughters (with the exception of Nancy) to Europe for an extended visit, and particularly to Florence, Italy. They left in November 1913 and lived overseas for nearly a year, but they had to return to the US in October 1914, because of the increasing dangers of World War I. 

On their return voyage, among their fellow passengers (according to Nancy Brush) “were Enrico Caruso and some of the Metropolitan Opera Company. They were full of fun and kept all the others so entertained that they didn’t have time to think about the danger [of being attacked]. They sang and played tricks on each other and had games together like so many gay children. One day Mother [Mittie Taylor Brush] looked up in surprise at her cabin window to see peering in at her the beaming face of Caruso with a lady’s hat on.

The following month, the New York Times reported that the great Caruso had dropped in at the Knoedler Galleries, to purchase an exquisite portrait that Gerome Brush had painted of his beautiful wife Louise. 

It was not until 1917 that the US entered World War I, joining the side of the Allies. Given the astonishing success with which British ships were being sunk by German submarines (called U-boats), the question of making Allied merchant ships less visible (or at least harder to target) became a paramount issue. American artists and others were encouraged to submit proposals for ship camouflage, and Gerome Brush was among those who responded.

Gerome Brush camouflage plan (not based on countershading)

In late 1917, the US Navy (working with the US Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation) officially gave its approval to six ship camouflage systems, named after their originators, including (artists) Gerome Brush, William Andrew MacKay, Lewis Herzog, Everett L. Warner, F.M. Watson, and (chemist) Maximillian Toch. For the rest of the war, according to Nancy Brush, her brother Gerome (along with other artists) was involved in supervising “the painting of merchant ships all along the eastern seaboard. He worked at Norfolk, Virginia, Boston Harbor, New York Harbor, and many other places. He trained men to do the painting according to Mr. [Abbott] Thayer’s theory [of countershading, in which] the color scheme for the ships was taken from the general coloring of a seagull, worked in two shades of gray and pure white, the underpart of everything being white.” 

In 1919, Gerome Brush was granted a second patent for ship camouflage, titled “System for Reducing the Visibility of Objects” (US Patent No. 1296753). His interest in camouflage evidently continued after the war, or perhaps it was rekindled by World War II, because in 1943, he was granted a third patent related to ship camouflage, titled “Method for Preventing Wake Formation” (US Patent 2414632). 

After WWI, Brush’s career as an artist can only have declined. Surely, his artwork (like that of his pre-Modern parents and friends) was all but dismissed as outmoded. As his parents aged, Gerome and his wife made increased visits to their home, in part because Louise was preparing a book about his father’s life. Unfortunately, in 1937, his father’s studio, artworks, papers and other irreplaceable artifacts (including Louise’s manuscript) were destroyed in a fire. 

Eventually, Gerome and Louise Brush moved away from Dublin (although their gravestones are located there) and settled in Brookline, Massachusetts. He appears to have painted portraits, sculpted portrait busts, and created murals for the Children’s Hospital in Boston. In the 1930s, he made detailed charcoal portraits of 109 members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra. In 1936, these were published as a book, titled The Boston Symphony Orchestra: Charcoal Drawings of Its Members with Biographical Sketches. In a foreword by Edward Weeks, his process is described as follows: “Each musician sat for him in the little room that houses the Casadesus Collection [of historic musical instruments]; each played for him a solo in order to banish the last vestige of self-consciousness, and from each he has drawn comments, bits of personal history, and the gleam of aspirations which are characteristic.” 

Gerome Brush died in Lincoln, Massachusetts, on September 13, 1954.

Sources

Behrens, Roy R., False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2002.

_______, Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research in Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2009.

_______, ed. Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2012.

Bowditch, Nancy Douglas, George de Forest Brush: Recollections of a Joyous Painter. Peterborough, New Hampshire: William L. Bauhan, 1970.

Brush, Gerome, The Boston Symphony Orchestra: Charcoal Drawings of Its Members with Biographical Sketches. Boston: Boston Symphony Orchestra, 1936.

“Caruso Buys Painting” in New York Times. November 25, 1914.

“Gerome Brush” (obituary) in New York Times. September 15, 1954, p. 33.

Lystra, Karen, Dangerous Intimacy: The Untold Story of Mark Twain’s Final Years. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004.

© Roy R. Behrens 

Book Review | America's Other Audubon

Book Review
America's Other Audubon
by Joy M. Kiser
Princeton Architectural Press, New York NY 2012
192 pp., illus. 4 b/w & 68 col. Trade, $45.00
ISBN 978-1-61689-059-9.

America's Other Audubon is a new large-format album of little-known ornithological plates by an all but unknown artist named Genevieve Estelle Jones (1847-1879). Her illustrations were originally published as hand-colored lithographs in 1886, just 10 years after she first saw an exhibition of John James Audubon's astonishing lithographs (Birds of America) at the World's Fair in Philadelphia. more>>>

Camouflage Artist | David O. Reasoner

USS Banago (1918) in dazzle camouflage (digital coloring)

David O(rville) Reasoner was born in 1882 in Upland IN. He attended Indiana University in Bloomington, where he graduated in 1909. In subsequent years, he studied painting at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. 

During World War I, Reasoner was employed by the US Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation, as a civilian navy camouflage artist, in the course of which he applied camouflage designs to US merchant ships. Records in the Archives of American Art indicate that his assignment officially ended on December 15, 1918.

Around 1920, Reasoner and two other Boston artists (Henry O’Connor (1891-1975) and Frederick Rhodes Sisson (1893-1962)) became apprentices and assistants to Abbott Handerson Thayer at the well-known painter’s home and studio in Dublin NH. Thayer’s publications about the “concealing coloration of animals” had influenced the development of Allied wartime camouflage during WWI. In various sources, Reasoner, O’Connor and Sisson have been described (along with other apprentices) as Thayer’s “copyists” (they made precise duplicates of his unfinished paintings, from which he then went on to make different finished versions). Also cited as an assistant in his later years was a painter named Grace Dredge (1895-?), originally from Des Moines IA.

Thayer’s health (both physical and psychological) was declining rapidly in the winter of 1920-1921, and according to Gladys Thayer (called Galla), the artist’s daughter, it was primarily David Reasoner who attended to Thayer’s needs and “toward the end did little besides take care of him.”

As described in Ross Anderson’s biography of the artist—

In the spring of 1921, while resting in bed Thayer asked an assistant [Reasoner] to bring him one of his unfinished canvases and his palette and brushes. As he began to work, his hand suddenly stiffened, evidence of a slight stroke. He suffered two more within the next three weeks, and died from a third on May 29, 1921.

Years later, Reasoner provided his own account of Thayer’s last weeks in a 1948 news article in The Kingston [New York] Daily Freeman, in which the following text appears:

Even on his [Abbott Thayer’s] deathbed, painting was uppermost on his mind. The family physician had told [David] Reasoner ‘It won’t be long. He might last the day out.’ Thayer had been working on a picture promised for shipment to a New York gallery. The elderly man asked Dave to bring up the picture from the studio. It was set up where he could see it from his bed. He then required Dave to darken a small area near the bottom. ‘No, a little higher—now a little to the left. No, no, come and help me over to it.’ Any movement would likely be his last, but Reasoner knew he would try to do it alone if he didn’t help so he practically carried Thayer to the spot that needed darkening. It is said that half the time, Thayer worked paint with his thumb instead of a brush, and the thumb had a beat as regular as a metronome after fifty years of use.

Curiously, there is a public record that Grace Dredge and Lyman Reasoner (David Reasoner’s brother) were married on May 28, 1921, in Keene, New Hampshire (a dozen miles from Dublin), one day before Thayer’s death. She took on the married name of Grace Dredge Reasoner (and later, Grace Reasoner Clark). Ten days later, on June 6, 1921 (according to an Indiana University alumni note), David Reasoner and Gladys Thayer were also married.

Following Thayer’s death (based on correspondence in the Thayer Family Papers in the AAA), it appears that Thayer’s son, Gerald Handerson Thayer (called Gra) was initially the executor of Thayer’s estate. Somewhat later, due to an unclear set of circumstances, the role of executor was shifted to David Reasoner.

Around 1925, the Reasoners moved to Woodstock, New York. They became the parents of four children, Allen (who died during World War II), Jean (portrait painter Jean Reasoner Plunket), Peggy and Richard.  According to online information, plans for that facility—

began in 1928 with the formation of Woodstock Property, Inc. (WPI), founded by David O. Reasoner, an Indiana-born artist with a superb golf game. After selling stock in WPI Reasoner negotiated the purchase of 250 acres of farmland…WPI then leased the land to Woodstock Country Club, Inc. at a nominal fee. Reasoner presided over both WPI and the Country Club…

At about the same time, the Woodstock Playhouse was founded, under David Reasoner’s management, a position that he continued to hold for at least the next few years. A solo exhibition of his wife’s paintings was held at the Woodstock Country Club Tavern in August 1932.

Beginning in the spring of 1937, for about three years, the Reasoner family was all but nomadic, traveling across the country by station wagon, often camping out, and living intermittently at various locations in California (San Diego, Point Loma, Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Santa Monica). In June of 1940, when David Reasoner’s mother became ill, they moved back to his hometown, Upland IN, about 75 miles northeast of Indianapolis.

The US entered WWII at the end of 1941. In early January, David Reasoner (leaving his wife to care for his ailing mother in Indiana) moved to Washington DC­­, accompanied by his daughter Jean, in the hope that, given his experience in the previous war, he might once again find work as a ship camoufleur. In late January 1942, he met with artists Charles Bittinger (1879-1970), head of the U.S. Navy Research Department, and Everett Warner (1877-1963), both of whom had been involved in WWI camouflage. According to a Reasoner letter (in February 1942), he had been told by Bittinger that it was “just a question of time until there will be all-out marine camouflage,” and that “when this happens, I  seem to be in line for the top job.” But, according to a later letter (June 1942), he was eventually assigned not to camouflage but to “managerial duties”: “Instead of camouflaging ships I find myself an impresario, secretary, and telephone operator.”
 

News article from Kingston Daily Freeman, New York (1948)

In the same 1948 news article (cited earlier) in The Kingston [New York] Daily Freeman, there is a story that contends that, when David Reasoner moved to Washington DC, he gave to Walter Seaton, a Woodstock friend and artist, "what he thought were a lot of old canvases," including some from Thayer's studio. One of those canvases, as Seaton discovered while cleaning them for future reuse, was a previously unknown Thayer self-portrait, one of only four he made. Included in the news article is a low quality newsprint photograph (reproduced here) of Seaton (standing on the left) and other local artists with the newly discovered painting.

A few years earlier, Gladys Thayer Reasoner had rejoined her husband in Washington, DC, where she died in August 1945. David Reasoner’s mother, Louanna, remained in Indiana and died in 1948.  

In a letter dated October 4, 1949, David Reasoner (on behalf of the Thayer Estate) donated to the Smithsonian Institution 96 sketches, photographs, watercolor studies, demonstration models, and paintings “made by my father-in-law [Abbott Thayer] is his study of protective coloration in the animal kingdom.”

Sources

Abbott Handerson Thayer andThayer Family Papers at the website of the Archives of American Art (Smithsonian Institution), Research Collections (includes 10,074 online image and document scans, with numerous letters and other materials pertaining to David Reasoner).

“Alumni Notes” (David Reasoner entry), in Indiana University Alumni Quarterly. Vol 8 No 4, October 1921, p. 528.

Ross Anderson, Abbott Handerson Thayer. Exhibition catalog. Syracuse, New York: Everson Museum, 1982.

“Artist Discovers Rare Self-Portrait by Thayer,” in The Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston, New York). December 14, 1948, pp. 1 and 17.

Roy R. Behrens, Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art,Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2009.

“Gladys Reasoner to Hold Exhibition,” in The Kingston Daily Freeman, July 25, 1932, p. 6. 

Nelson C. White, Abbott H. Thayer: Painter and Naturalist. Hartford: Connecticut Printers, 1951.   

***

Camouflage Artist | Charles Bittinger

Anon, painting of a WWI US dazzle-camouflaged ship (1918).

American artist-scientist Charles Bittinger was born on June 27, 1879. Originally from Washington DC, he studied for two years at MIT, with the intention of becoming a scientist. He then switched to painting, and went off to Paris to study at the École des Beaux-Arts and other French schools. There he married a concert singer named Edith Gay, and returned to the US to study at the Art Students League. 

During World War I, he was one of the artists who studied at a camouflage training school established in New York by William Andrew MacKay (Yates 1919). He also worked for the US Navy at Eastman Kodak Laboratories with physicist Loyd A. Jones on the development of ship camouflage.

Camouflaged USS Zirkel (1918), digital coloring

Between the wars, Bittinger relocated to Washington DC, and began to experiment with the use of science in making art. In 1929, he painted three murals for the Franklin Institute, depicting stages in the life of Benjamin Franklin. When observed in incandescent light, each painting appeared to be a certain picture, but when viewed under ultraviolet light, it appeared to be an entirely different picture. In 1935, Bittinger exhibited another work in which Charles Lindbergh’s famous transatlantic flight appeared under normal viewing conditions, but the same painting became the Mona Lisa when viewed through an optical instrument that Bittinger had invented.

The following is an excerpt from Literary Digest (1921) that talks about his tandem use of art and science for inventive purposes:

…Charles Bittinger, a scientist who is primarily an artist, has hit upon the idea of utilizing these differences, increasing them where possible and making them serve his purpose. During the war Mr. Bittinger served in the department of camouflage of the United States Navy, conducting experiments in reflection and transmission of light-waves. By means of the spectro-photometer, he established the reflective powers of a number of pigments and dyes that had invisible spectral differences, and, with a palette set with paintings similar in color when seen in a white light, but contrasting sharply in degrees of light and dark when seen under a red light, painted his two-fold pictures, using round brushes for one series of paints and triangular ones for the other, to avoid confusion in the work.…

In Mr. Bittinger’s New York studio is a miniature stage set with a scene on the Riviera, which immediately changes to Madison Square in winter when the red light is switched on. Costumes, too, can be handled in endless effective ways by applying the principle to the dyes used and to the patterns in which the colors are put on. A chorus might come dancing on in dresses with horizontal stripes. The light changes—and instantly the stripes are vertical…

Mr. Bittinger has painted an airplane wing with the German cross upon it, which when viewed by our army through binoculars equipped with a red filter, discloses itself to be not the German cross, but the red, white and blue of the Allies. Thus an airplane could fly unscathed over the German lines and return home again without being fired upon.

Bittinger's research was also described scientifically by Walter Clark (1939) as follows:

Some observations by Bittinger may be mentioned in connection with the separation by photographic means of two colors which are visually identical. He selected paints having predetermined and known reflection characteristics and a spectral difference which was not apparent to the eye. Scenes were painted in these colors, and illuminated with light of one color to produce a certain visual effect. By changing the spectral quality of the light in accordance with the known invisible spectral difference in the paints, he was able to produce an entirely different visual effect. For instance, in one example the painting shows a summer scene when viewed by white light, and an entirely different winter scene when illuminated by red light.

Bittinger (c1931) working on a project for the US Bureau of Standards

In 1937, Bittinger was invited jointly by the US Navy and the National Geographic Society to travel to Canton Island in the Pacific to paint a total solar eclipse. Nearly a decade later, he was the official artist for Operation Crossroads, for which he was one of the artists to paint the first atomic explosion at the Bikini Atoll in 1946. The paintings he made for the latter are posted online here by the US Naval Historical Center.

During World War II, he once again worked on ship camouflage for the U.S. Navy, in which he was the administrative overseer of the research of such camouflage artists as Everett Warner (who was the head of the camouflage team), Bennet Buck, Sheffield H. Kagy, William Walters, Arthur S. Conrad, and Robert Hays. When Bittinger died on December 18, 1970, his obituary in the Washington Post included this statement:

Mr. Bittinger served in the Navy during both world wars, receiving the Legion of Merit in 1946 for his work in the camouflage section of the Bureau of Ships. 

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Patents by Charles Bittinger
US Patent No. 1,342,247 [June 1, 1920]: Combining Reflected and Transmitted Light Waves of Varying Lengths to Produce Subjective Changes in Scenic Effects.

US Patent No. 1,629,250 [May 17, 1927]: Production and Utilization of Diachronic Inks.

US Patent No. 1,781,999 [March 16, 1929]: Rear View Mirror.
US Patent No. 1,934,310 [with E.O. Hulburt, November 7, 1933]: Visibility Meter and Method of Measuring Visibility.

Sources 

Anon, “Two Paintings in One” in Literary Digest, March 12, 1921, p. 25.
Anon, “First ‘Invisible’ Murals in Franklin Institute” in New York Times, June 8, 1934, p. 14.
Anon, “By Any Other Light” in New York Times, March 3, 1935, p. X18.
Roy R. Behrens, Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2009, pp. 54-57.
Roy R. Behrens, ed., Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2012.
Charles Bittinger, “Naval Camouflage” in US Naval Proceedings, October 1940, pp. 1394-1398.
“Charles Bittinger, 91, Dies” (obituary) in Washington Post, December 20, 1970, p. B12.
Walter Clark, Photography by Infra-Red: Its Principles and Application. New York: John Wiley, 1939.
Raymond Francis Yates, “The Science of Camouflage Explained” in Everyday Engineering Magazine, March 1919, pp. 253-256 (reprinted in Behrens 2012).

Vaccination Camouflage and More Swimsuits

Have you a camouflage bathing suit? (1919)

Above, photographic images (digitally restored) from “HAVE YOU A ‘CAMOUFLAGE’ BATHING SUIT? It’s the Summer’s Newest Fad” in The Evening World Daily Magazine. May 31, 1919, p. 1.

…

Anon, “HER BATHING SUIT IS GOOD, BUT NOT MUCH: Young Woman in Camouflage Outfit at Coney Island, Reverses Art as Practiced in War and Reveals—Oh, Boy!” in The Washington Herald, June 2, 1919, p. 1—
 

Camouflage, according to the general understanding, is intended to conceal, but the young lady who sprung a “camouflage” bathing suit at Coney Island this afternoon—providing that was her intention—failed to accomplish any such purpose.

It is doubtful if anything about the suit, or the young lady, escaped the attention of the several thousand persons on the beach. No two could be found who agreed on the details of the costume, but they all agreed beautifully regarding the details of the young lady. A woman’s description of the effect would be highly technical, so here’s one by a man—

Head—Bare.
Face—Slightly tanned.
Neck—Bare.
Arms—Bare.
Legs—Bare.
The rest—bathing suit.

The costume was made of something or other, and its principal colors were violet, indigo, blue, green, yellow, orange and read, with intermediate shades. It was a perfect fit.

Above Some of the first vaccinations for the most dreaded contagious diseases (diptheria, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, and whooping cough) were introduced shortly after World War I. Sometimes they left substantial scars. Shown here is a full-page article on “Beauty’s Latest Skin Game” which revealed the latest clever means of “vaccination camouflage.” From The Morning Tulsa (OK) Daily World. December 17, 1922.

Dazzle Swimsuits Déja Vu

Dazzle-camouflaged swimsuits at Margate (UK) in 1919

In two earlier posts, we shared World War I-era news stories and photos about the scandalous popularity of women's swimsuits that were prompted by the dazzle designs used on merchant ships back then. Just today, we found yet another one. The news photo above was published in the New York Sun on July 15, 1919, with the following caption—

The camouflage bathing suit has made its appearance in England and has excited attention if not admiration. Three exponents of the "dazzle" idea are pictured here, disporting themselves on the sands at Margate.

In addition, maybe this gives us reason enough to share a little poem about the same subject from just two years earlier. Written by Well Clay and titled "Telephone Trail," it was published in Telephony. Telephone Publishing Corporation, 1917, p. 31—

"Oh, mother, may I go down and swim?"
     "Oh, yes, my darling daughter;
But your bathing suit's so awfully scant
     You must stay in deep water."
"Oh, camouflage will remedy that,"
     The maiden laughed in glee.
"No one will notice my bathing suit
     After it has made them notice me."

Still More on H. Ledyard Towle | A Hue Guru

Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps (1918

H(arold) Ledyard Towle was an American artist and industrial colorist, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1890. After studying art at Pratt Institute, and at the Art Students League (under Frank Vincent DuMond and William Merritt Chase), he embarked on what he thought would be a career as a painter of portraits and landscapes. However, as he later admitted, his experiences as a camouflage artist during World War I changed many of his attitudes, including how he looked at art.

During WWI, Towle was a camouflage instructor in the 71st Infantry Regiment of the New York State National Guard. In that capacity, he provided camouflage training for troops who were preparing to fight on the battlefields in Europe. He also taught a course about camouflage at the Columbia University Teachers College. Before the war ended, he himself shipped off to France as a machine-gunner and camoufleur at the Front.

While still in New York, he also took on an unusual task, which led to a flood of news articles. In early 1918, approval was made to establish a Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps, and Towle was designated as the instructor for a unit of about thirty-five to fifty civilian women volunteers. The training was largely conducted out of doors in New York, on the grounds of the Billings Estate, which is now the museum The Cloisters.

Full-page article on Towle's women camoufleurs (July 1918)

Towle’s course for women was not only about camouflage, since it also offered training in military drill, boxing, and pistol and rifle marksmanship. Because (or so it was commonly said at the time) women were naturally inclined toward sewing, one of their primary challenges was to make hooded camouflaged “observation suits,” with which they could blend in with natural settings. There was no shortage of news stories about the unit’s activities (enlivened by photographs, along with appropriate quotes from Lieutenant Towle). In July 1918, there were widely published stories about these women camoufleurs (jokingly referred to then as “camoufleuses”) because they had applied a camouflage scheme to a scaled-down wooden battleship (called the USS Recruit) in the middle of New York City in Union Square. In fact, it was not a genuine ship, but a landlocked replica built in 1917 for use as a novelty recruiting station. It was someone’s suggestion that it would be even more novel, generate more publicity, and encourage more recruits to join if its surface was totally covered in brightly-colored, abstract shapes (in “dazzle camouflage”). The women camoufleurs in Towle’s course were chosen to accomplish this. They did the whole thing overnight—and it was the talk of the town the next morning.

When Captain Towle returned from the war, surely he was discouraged to find (like others of his generation) that American Impressionism was no longer in vogue, having been swept aside by Modernism that had begun with the Armory Show in 1913. Beginning in 1919, he worked for the US Treasury Department in Washington DC, in connection with the Victory Liberty Loan Committee, then moved on to positions at several advertising agencies, including one at which he was in charge of the DuPont Company account.

A breakthrough in his career took place in 1925, when he was hired by DuPont (working in cooperation with General Motors in Detroit) to establish a Duco Color Advisory Service in New York. As documented in a book by Regina Lee Blaszczyk on the history of color use in industrial production (The Color Revolution), this enterprising artist-turned-camoufleur became phenomenally influential at DuPont, General Motors (where he worked with other former camoufleurs, and with Harvey J. Earl), and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, as industry’s first and foremost “color engineer.”

Towle moved from New York to Detroit in July of 1928, when General Motors launched an “art and color section” and appointed Towle its “chief color expert.” He talked about his career transition in news articles at the time. “I went into the war,” he explained, “thinking art belonged to the chosen few. I came out knowing that it belonged to every urchin in the street. Working on wartime camouflage problems taught one how to use color with a purpose. I saw the futility of painting portraits to collect dust in museums, and turned to camouflaging industry and its products of everyday life.” His disdain for the art world is evident in his statement that “The automobile manufacturers and plumbing magnates are rivaling the Medici of old as patrons of art, and the resources of modern corporations are unlimited.”

In Blaszczyk’s book, she concludes that Towle was “America’s top automotive and paint colorist.” In the 1928 news article (cited earlier), he is described as "a pioneer in the movement which has brought lavender tea boxes, turquoise alarm clocks and a host of vivid motor cars…," a hue guru who “is now studying the 'color consciousness' of each section of the country, hoping to perfect hues which will satisfy the particular desires of each district."

In December 1934, Towle joined the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company as director of its Division of Creative Design and Color. In 1941, he was interviewed in a news article about his proposal to set up a Pittsburgh civilian camouflage committee, for the purpose of determining which facilities in that city were most vulnerable to attacks by enemy aircraft, and “to design methods either to hide these places by breaking up their shadows or by making them harder to hit.”

From 1945 through 1950, Towle was a lecturer in Business Administration at the College of William and Mary. He died on November 8, 1973. His papers are housed in the Manuscript and Archives Department at the Haley Museum and Library in Wilmington DE.

...

Sources

Roy R. Behrens, False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2002.

_________, Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2009.

_________ ed., Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2012.

Regina Lee Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012.

“Color Engineer Sees New Epoch of Vivid Utility” in Waterloo (Iowa) Courier, April 10, 1929, p. 14.

“Raid Defense Gets Impetus in Pittsburgh” in Sandusky (Ohio) Register and News. September 16, 1941.

H. Ledyard Towle, “What the American ‘Camouflage’ Signifies” in New York Times. June 3, 1917, p. 14.

_________, “Projecting the Automobile into the Future” in Society for Automotive Engineering Journal, July 29, 1931.

_________, “Here It Comes” in American Magazine, September 1932.

“Ledyard Towle” (obituary), in New York Times, November 11, 1973, p. 73.