Milwaukee illustrator William J. Aylward during WWI

Captain William J. Aylward

Until recently, I don't think I had heard of American artist William J. Aylward (1875-1956). I should have, since he was born and raised in Milwaukee, where I lived and taught for a decade. On the other hand, he left Milwaukee for the East as early as 1903, and his prominence was diminished because, throughout his career, he was dismissed as an illustrator (a commercial or advertising artist) not as a privileged fine artist.

It was interesting to find that Aylward was the son of a Milwaukee Great Lakes ship captain, which explains in part his lifelong fascination with ships and related nautical themes. He served in World War I, not as a camouflage artist, but (as shown in the photograph above) as an official government war artist, which means that he was assigned to complete onsite drawings and paintings of wartime settings and events.

Back in Milwaukee, long before WWI broke out, he had been associated with illustrator Arthur Becher, with whom he was one of the founders of the Milwaukee Art Students League. Later known as the Milwaukee Art Society, among its well-known members were Edward Steichen, Carl Sandburg (Steichen’s brother-in-law), and the painter and sculptor Louis Mayer. Together, Becher and Aylward decided to study illustration with Howard Pyle’s school in Wilmington NJ. Soon after, their lifelong careers began as two of the country’s finest magazine illustrators.

William J. Aylward

Throughout his life, Aylward produced illustrations for such famous books as Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, Jack London’s The Sea Wolf, and various others. His wartime work was especially accomplished. Reproduced above is his painting of American troops on the move in France during WWI, with a camouflaged truck in the foreground. Below are three full-color paintings (watercolor and charcoal) of wartime harbor settings, completed in France in 1919. Included in each are portions of a camouflaged ship. 

William J. Aylward

William J. Aylward

William J. Aylward

Milwaukee Art Museum Camouflage

Panoramic lithograph (detail) of Milwaukee WI (1898)

Above A detail of a panoramic view of downtown Milwaukee WI (East Water Street looking south), published in 1898 by the Gugler Lithographic Company. The Guglers played a prominent role in commercial printing in Milwaukee. The firm's founder's son, Julius Gugler, was the father of artist Frida Gugler (1874-1966), who studied with William Merrit Chase, and designer-architect Eric Gugler, who actively contributed to World War I ship camouflage. We discussed all this in an earlier post, but more recently have run across the following excerpt from an article by Dudley C. Watson, titled PASTOR SHOWS TALENT IN THE FIELD OF ART in The Milwaukee Journal (Sunday, June 9, 1918), p. 3—

The artists of Wisconsin were invited to meet at the [Milwaukee Art] institute Wednesday night [on June 5, 1918] to form a Wisconsin committee of the division of pictorial publicity…

Among the artists who were present at the Wednesday meeting were Frida Gugler, Alice Miller, Emily Groom, Julia Allen, Mabel Key, Raymond Sellzner, Armin Hansen, Gaetano Busalacchi, Irvin Kramer, Roland Tiemann, Hans Saltenberg, F.W. Heine, D[udley] C[rafts] Watson, Francesco Spicuzza, Carl Holty, and A.F. Brasz, Oshkosh.

It has been suggested that the local committee might work out some experiments in ship camouflage, providing an old hull could be procured and placed out in the basin of our [Lake Michigan] harbor. Ship camouflage is still in its infancy and who knows but our Wisconsin artists might discover or invent something that would save hundreds of lives. At the meeting on Thursday it is hoped that some way to obscure the hull will be revealed…

Dudley Crafts Watson (1885-1972) was the (first) director of the Milwaukee Art Institute (later called the Milwaukee Art Society, and now the Milwaukee Art Museum), serving from 1913-1924. He was related to filmmaker Orson Welles (who had been born in Kenosha), and became Welles' guardian after the deaths of his parents. After leaving Milwaukee, Watson was associated with the Art Institute of Chicago as an official lecturer.

Note See also earlier post about Milwaukee artist and WWII camoufleur Edward Morton.

USS Sturgeon Bay in Camouflage at Green Bay WI

USS Sturgeon Bay in dazzle camouflage

What colors were used on World War I American camouflaged ships, and in what combination? It seems we can never be certain, since apparently no color photographs were made of them. Some hand-painted models exist. There are also several hundred color lithographic plans (including one full set at the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design), but they state that the colors shown on the plans are merely placeholders and may not be the actual colors applied. There are also dozens (probably more) of artists' on-site portrayals of dazzle-painted ships, c1918-1919.

Never before have we seen a hand-tinted photographic postcard of a dazzle-painted ship, of which there are two versions (above and below on this blogpost: NH 105922-A-KN and NH 105922-KN) on the website of the Naval History and Heritage Command. These are cropped and uncropped photographs of the USS Sturgeon Bay at Green Bay WI, two postcard versions of the same view, c. 1919 .

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Associated Press, SCHOOL FOR CAMOUFLAGE ARTISTS AT GREAT LAKES, Janesville Daily Gazette (Janesville WI), August 26, 1918, p. 1—

Great Lakes, Ill., Aug. 26—A school of camouflage artists is the newest feature of the art officer school of the Great Lakes naval training station. The instructor is Karl O. Amend,• formerly a theatrical scenic artist in New York. Courses in the school will take 12 weeks to complete and graduates are to be given opportunities for advance rating in the service.

USS Sturgeon Bay in dazzle camouflage

• From CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (2009) and other sources: Karl (Otto) Amend (1885–January 2, 1944). Originally from Ohio, Amend was trained as a set designer. He designed stage sets for various Broadway plays, including Smile at Me, I Must Love Someone, and Vanities, and was founder and proprietor of Amend Scenic Studios. In 1982, an exhibition of his work, titled Behind the Scenes: The Theater Art of Karl Amend, was held at the New York Public Library.

more info

Edward Morton | More Milwaukee Camouflage

Restoration of WPA mural by Edward Morton (1938)

Above A Depression-era Works Progress Administration (WPA) mural (titled Winter Sports) by Wisconsin artist Edward Morton, commissioned in 1938 by the US Government for permanent installation in the post office at Oconomowoc WI. In the 1970s, the mural was taken down and thereafter kept in the basement. Fortunately, it was restored in 2003, and is once again on public display in the post office.

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Many years ago, we taught for more than a decade at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. So did an aging artist named Edward Morton, who was then an adjunct instructor of drawing. I had just published a book on art and camouflage. If I had known better, I would have talked to him at length, in part because one day he said that he had served as an army camoufleur during World War II. I didn't follow up on it. He has long since died—and now I have plenty of questions to ask.

A few weeks ago, I ran across an article from the Milwaukee Sentinel (December 11, 1944), which includes a photograph of the young Ed Morton, home on leave from the army, painting a portrait of his wife. Here's what the article says, followed by the news photo—

On leave from camp at Maldon MO, Sergeant Edward L. Morton turned from painting things that do not exist to painting things that are real. In the army, Sgt. Morton is a camoufleur, but in civilian life he was an instructor at [Milwaukee's Layton School of Art] and won prizes for his own work at State Fair art shows. Here he is completing a portrait of his wife Dorothy, at the home of her parents…

Edward L. Morton, US Army camoufleur (1944)

Camouflage Artist | Milwaukee's Eric Gugler

Eric Gugler (c1918), structural deception ploys

Above Eric Gugler, three-stage diagram for a World War I ship camouflage proposal (c1918) in which actual structural changes are made to the height and positioning of a ship's masts, smoke stacks, and other features in order to throw off the course calculations of U-boat gunners.

Comparable diagrams were initially made public in an article by Robert G. Skerrett, "How We Put It Over on the Periscope," in The Rudder. Vol 35 Nos 3 and 4, March and April 1919, pp. 97-102 and 175-179 (recently reprinted in our SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook as "Hoodwinking the Periscope" (pp. 122-151)). The diagram shown here was published in Albert Roskam, Dazzle Painting: Kunst Als Camouflage: Camouflage Als Kunst (Netherlands: Stichting Kunstprojecten en Uitgevergij Spijik, 1987), which attributes it to the National Archives, but the style suggests the possibility that it may have been redrawn.

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Gugler is a prominent name in the printing industry in Milwaukee WI. It begins with a German-born engraver named Henry Gugler, Sr (1816-1880), who came to the US in 1853. During the Civil War, he was an important engraver for the US Bureau of Engraving and Printing in Washington DC, producing, among other famous works, a life-sized steel engraving of Abraham Lincoln. In the 1870s, he moved to Milwaukee and became a partner with his son Julius Gugler (1848-1919) in the H. Gugler & Son Lithographing Company.

According to certain sources, Julius Gugler was a poet as well as a printer. Among other art-inclined family members were his daughter Frida Gugler (1874-1966), a painter who had studied with William Merrit Chase, and her younger brother, Eric Gugler (1889-1974), who achieved considerable success as a muralist, sculptor, interior designer and architect.

Notably, in the early 1930s, Eric Gugler worked closely with FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt in the expansion, replanning and redesign of the West Wing of the White House, including the current Oval Office. He designed the Theodore Roosevelt Island National Memorial (with sculptor Paul Manship), the FDR Memorial, a memorial to Eleanor Roosevelt at the United Nations, the Harvey Firestone Memorial in Akron OH, the World War II Memorial at Anzio Beach in Italy, a memorial for the Mayo Brothers in Rochester MN, and several buildings on the campus of Wabash College in Crawfordsville IN. He was also involved in the design of Arthurdale WV, the first New Deal federal subsistence housing project (c1933).

Unfortunately, almost no one is aware that he was also an early participant in the development of ship camouflage during World War I. That (and the efforts of other artists) was alluded to in a brief article in the Milwaukee Journal (December 9, 1918), which reported on a talk that week at the Rotary Club by the director of the Milwaukee Art Institute, Dudley Crafts Watson (guardian of Orson Welles). "The coming of war helped American art in an amazing manner," Watson claimed. "When the war broke out, it was a great problem what American artists would do to help win the war. The answer was found in the tremendous help given the country in their work in getting out effective Liberty Loan and other posters as well as in the camouflage departments of both army and navy."

Milwaukee-born architect and WW1 camoufleur Eric Gugler

As an aspiring artist-architect, Gugler studied at The Armour Institute (now the Illinois Institute of Technology) and the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, then also earned a BA degree at Columbia University in 1911. For three years, before the war began, he also studied at the American Academy in Rome. Subsequently, he set up an architectural office in New York. In the 1930s, he married Broadway actress and dancer Anne Tonetti, who had been a protegé of Isadora Duncan.

So far, we haven't been able to find very much about his involvement in camouflage. We do know that he attended the "camouflage school" that was set up by muralist William Andrew Mackay, who, like Gugler, presumably also admired Theodore Roosevelt. And we also know that he was particularly interested in the use of perspective distortions (as in the diagrams shown above).