Saturday, March 6, 2010

Anonymous WWI Ship Camouflage



















A participant in World War I was a British (presumably Canadian) soldier with the initials JM who was also an amateur artist. He served in France and Belgium with the Royal Horse and Field Artillery in 1917-18. Two volumes of his watercolor paintings and pen-and-ink drawings have survived (130 works total), and are among the holdings of the Special Collections Library at the University of Victoria in British Columbia, where they have been digitized and can now be viewed online. Of particular relevance to the history of camouflage is the cover of the first volume (shown here), which includes a full-color caricature of a dazzle-painted ship.