the camouflage of the backs of low-cut evening gowns

Above This news photograph was published in the Evening Journal (Wilmington DE), May 8, 1920, p. 1, shortly after the end of World War I, when camouflaged ships were still prominent in everyone’s mind. The headline read “CAMOUFLAGED” BACKS LATEST FAD.

[In Boston, the photo caption reads] Something had to be done when styles kept dropping dresses lowers and lower in the back. And it fell to Adolf Boulnois to solve the problem. Boulnois, who had learned art, “as she really is,” in many world’s fashion centers, is now painting ships, or some such, in the middle of fair backs—or bare backs. It’s the latest American fad.

Another article, in the Chico Record (May 11, 1920), which uses the same photograph, reads as follows—

The fad of painting decorations on milady’s back, which came into vogue with the arrival of backless waists, is growing. This picture shows that. At first the more daring maids had tiny mice or little rosebuds or military insignia painted on their shoulders. Recently Miss Marjorie Barnes, of the "Listen Lester” company in New York, engaged Adolf Boulnois, said to be the originator of the fad, to paint a ship under full sail on her back. One of the newest low-cut gowns designed for Miss Barnes gives her an opportunity to display the painting.

The artist was Adolf Henrick Boulnois, from Winthrop MA, who had been born in Germany on September 17, 1889.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

the squad of daubers who applied camouflage patterns

Above I have no good explanation for this. It is a group photograph that appeared in the Evening Public Ledger-Philadelphia on August 21, 1918, p. 11, with the headline WHAT THE BOYS IN SHIPYARDS ARE DOING: The “Camouflage Club” of Hog Island. 

I haven’t the names of any of those in the photograph. I only know that they are “the squad of daubers who have been picked up to give the Quistconck, the first ship launched at the big [Hog Island] shipyard, her first coat of camouflage. See their paint pots and brushes then study their countenances and see if they aren’t fit to fool the Kaiser’s U-boats skippers.”

Who are they? I don’t recognize any of them. Are they Philadelphia-area civilian artists who have been hired to paint the ship? Presumably. But some might also simply be house painters.

Whatever, the end result of their efforts is pictured below, the dazzle-painted USS Quistconck.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus