Camouflage Exhibit at Spy Museum Opens in March

Exhibition Catalog Cover

I am pleased that I was asked to write the introduction to the catalog for a major upcoming exhibition at the International Spy Museum in Washington DC. Titled Camouflage: Designed to Deceive, the exhibit opens on March 1, 2026, and will remain on view for three years.

The catalog / book can be preordered at online book sites, and tickets are available in advance on the museum's website.

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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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Joakim Derlow camouflage exhibition in Stockholm

Derlow Exhibition (Stockholm)

Joakim Derlow describes himself as an “artist from Sweden with outposts in Amsterdam and Stockholm.” I think he first contacted me very early this year, because of his great interest in camouflage and especially (myself as well) in art and camouflage compared. Since then we have batted emails back and forth, along with images, research references and quotes. During most of the year, he has been preparing for an exhibition on the subject, as well as a publication in which he collects and assesses a medley of historical finds.

I have just last evening received from him an email with photographs of his on-going exhibition. Two of them are included here. They show the installed exhibition in Stockholm. As he states in his message, and as is clearly evident in the photographs—

Central in the space is a camouflage net made together with Ukrainian refugees living in Poland. The net manifests the artistic quality of camouflage in the art space before it is sent to the frontlines by the end of the exhibition. An object that passes between the decorative and the utilitarian depending on what side of the border it finds itself. Other works are uniforms mounted on stretcher frames to once again become paintings like the artists that made these camouflage patterns in the first place.

If you browse around the visible space in the photographs, you can see quite a few art and camouflage icons. Among my favorites is the elongated black rectangular panel on the wall, very nearly ceiling height. It is a cut-out silhouette of a bird (no doubt a pheasant), like those that Abbott H. Thayer proposed (another bird flies over the top).

Also, among my favorite features is the wall-mounted moulding on the right wall, from which book-like clusters of pages are hung from wooden pegs. I applaud the otherall color scheme. But this moulding with things suspended from pegs reminds me of comparable racks on which the Shakers hung their chairs, to suspend them while they swept the floor.

It is so encouraging to see that Joakim has succeeded in bringing all this together. You may be able to follow his work at <https://derlow.net/>. It’s my understanding that he plans to take this further, to an even more ambitious stage, and perhaps it will become a book.

By wonderful coincidence, last evening, as I was reading Joakim’s email, my wife Mary came in from the garden to tell me that while she was picking beans, she touched what was not a bean but a beautiful praying mantis—same size, shape and color, of course. Now, this morning, she has taken me out to the garden, and we have been able to find the praying mantis again—it is still hanging about in the beans.

Derlow Exhibition (Stockholm)

 

the tragic life of a taxidermist, camoufleur and convict

Above An assemblage by Romainian surrealist Viktor Brauner (1903-1966), titled Wolf Table (using taxidermy bits from a fox, not a wolf), 1939. Other than their shared interest in taxidermy, there is no explicit connection between Brauner and the story of Arthur J. Coleman below.

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In the 1921 Indianapolis city directory, Arthur J. Coleman is listed as a taxidermist (he was the curator at the Indiana Statehouse Museum) and a custodian, with the home address of 337 South State Avenue. James A. Coleman, his father, shared the same residence, as did Arthur’s mother, Nancy S. Coleman.

In connection with his museum position, Coleman was allowed to carry a gun, a revolver in a shoulder holster. In May 1920, he and three companions (including an eighteen-year-old woman named Floy Minck) were returning to Indianapolis at night, when Coleman, who was driving, noticed that an automobile tire was blocking the road. When he stopped to look more closely, he saw that a rope was attached to the tire, and that it was being pulled off from the side. He heard voices in the dark, and saw six men approaching the car. He drew his revolver and fired two rounds. The men fled and Coleman hurriedly drove off.

In September 1920, Floy Edna Minck (1902-1976) married an Indianapolis carpenter named Bernard B. Bartlett. Ten months later, Arthur J. Coleman married a young woman (the same age as Minck) named Elizabeth (Libby) Schmitter. In November of that same year, there was a jury trial in Indianapolis, in which Coleman was accused of threatening to kill Bartlett, because of a dispute about “a girl whom Bartlett later married” (presumably Floy Minck Bartlett). The jury could not agree on a verdict.

Coleman’s marriage to Libby Schwitter Coleman was an unfortunate pairing. It was troubled from the start, and they agreed to separate at the end of the first year. Coleman moved to New Harmony IN, on the Wabash River, while his wife lived twenty miles west in Crossville IL. They had lived apart for about a year, when, according to Coleman, he received a phone message and a letter from his wife, suggesting that they talk about living together again.

On April 26, 1923, Coleman (this is based on his account) drove to Crossville, to talk to his wife about reconciliation at a house where she was then staying (apparently owned by someone named Jeff Young). When he entered the front door, he was struck on the head from behind and fell to the floor unconscious. When he regained consciousness (he testified), he was lying in a room, with a revolver in his hand. His own revolver was still in his shoulder holster. Nearby was the body of his dead wife, who had died from three or four bullet wounds. In a 1923 news article, it was noted (without explanation) that the owner of the house, Jeff Young, is “an inmate of a hospital for the insane in Illinois.” It was also claimed that a man (unnamed) who was in the house at the time of the shooting had “left immediately and was away from [that area] for a year.”

Despite Coleman’s account of what happened, he was arrested at the site for his wife’s murder, and jailed in Carmi, the county seat. On the day after his arrest, his mother visited him at the jail. She later said: “When I pulled Arthur’s head down to kiss him, I felt a bump on his head and noticed blood on my hand as I left the jail.” But that injury was not mentioned in the documentation for his appeal.

Coleman said that, while he was in jail for three weeks, awaiting his court appearance, the sheriff brought a “professional hangman” to his cell, to describe the agony of dying that way. He was then taken to a window, and shown where the scaffolding would be built. He was told: “That’s where we will stretch your damned neck.” He was also warned about the horror of being lynched if an angry mob would storm the jail.

Coleman later described his condition, while awaiting his court date, as being “sick and nervous.” Inspite of having no memory of the shooting, he decided to plead guilty (to avoid the death penalty) when he appeared before a judge on May 19. He was then sentenced to life in prison for a term of ninety-nine years. He spent the next 21 years at the Illinois state prison at Joliet as well as on a prison farm.

[So what does any of this have to do with camouflage? Aha, I thought you’d never ask.]

It seems that during his confinement, Coleman continued his interest in taxidermy, including animal camouflage, sculpture, landscape design, and museum exhibitions. Various people, including other inmates, congressmen, and well-known citizens (soprano Mary Garden being one) spoke in favor of his work. He was permitted to open a shop inside the prison, and “because of his genius,” a campaign was started to allow him to be pardoned. It did not succeed.

When the US entered World War II, following the attack on Pearl Harbor, there was a further effort to secure Coleman's release in exchange for advising the army on wartime camouflage. An article described him as “one of the best camouflage artists in the United States.” According to another account, he was “a nationally-known taxidermist and artist” who has “taken up camouflaging” and whose “services were wanted to help camouflage coast artillery batteries.” But that appeal was also denied.

In the end, Arthur J. Coleman was not pardoned, but he was released on parole on July 27, 1944, having served 21 years of his life sentence. Thereafter, he earned his living as a professional taxidermist. As late as April 1960, he owned a taxidermy shop (specializing in “game fish and big game mounts”) in Boca Raton FL. 

Below is the most complete source of information about Coleman's life, consisting of two pages in the Indianapolis Times, September 12, 1932, pp. 1 and 3.

SEE ALSO

Nature, Art, and Camouflage (35 min. video talk)

Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage (29 min. video talk)

Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk)

Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage (28 min. video talk)

ScholarWorks / American Women Camouflage Exhibit

UNI ScholarWorks Exhibit

Five years ago, in 2017, I curated an exhibition of historic government photographs, having to do with the role of American women during World War I, in the development of camouflage. 

The exhibition, consisting of forty vintage photographs, and titled HIDDEN FIGURES, premiered in a multiple-month exhibit at the Betty Strong Encounter Center and Sioux City Lewis and Clark Interpretive Center, in Sioux City IA.

The photographs in the exhibition, supplemented by text captions, have recently been posted on the ScholarWorks website of the Rod Library at the University of Northern Iowa. 

The activities of these women camoufleurs, as well as their connections to the Womens’ Suffrage Movement, are also featured in a recently completed documentary video (free here online), called Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage, and in a scholarly essay titled Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of World War I Ship Camouflage (available online also).

exhibition video / National Maritime Museum in Brest

Nearly five years ago, we blogged about an exhibition on WWI ship camouflage at the National Maritime Museum in Brest, France. I posted twice about the event (here and here), which opened in October 1917 and continued through December 1918. Titled Razzle Dazzle: L’art contre-attaque!, the installation was designed by the French design firm, Collectif XYZ.

I have recently been notified by the museum’s director, Jean-Yves Besselièvre, that a video about the exhibition is now available online at this link. Reproduced here above and below on this blog page are several screen grabs from the video, including some of the ship models and the dazzle-painted building that houses the design firm.

exhibition of hypothetical ship camouflage patterns

hypothetical camouflage schemes

Opening soon on May 24, 2022 (in the coming week) is a major gallery exhibition at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, which continues through June 24. Titled EVOLVING GRAPHIC DESIGN, it showcases the work of twenty-three graphic design professionals and design educators from throughout the nation. Represented is the widest variety of graphic media, including themes, research and techniques that extend beyond traditional prints on paper.

The exhibit’s originator, organizer and curator is Yeohyun Ahn, Assistant Professor of Graphic Design and Interactive Media, in the Graphic Design Program, UW-Madison Department of Art. Detailed information about the exhibition is online here.

I am pleased that my work is included in two components of the exhibition. In one will be exhibited a series of ten large-scale digital montages, called the Iowa Insect Series, that I made in 2012-2013 in collaboration with design colleague and friend David M. Versluis. Having retired from teaching recently, he now resides in Michigan. But at the time, he was a Professor of Art and Design at Dordt College in Iowa, while I was then on the faculty at the University of Northern Iowa. 



These works began with David’s high definition digital scans of various insect specimens from his collection. We worked together by what might be referred to as “blind collaboration.” To begin, he would email me one of the insect image scans. I then did something to alter or augment that image (somewhat like a move in chess), and returned the result by email to him. He then made additional alterations, and sent that second result to me. We continued blindly, back and forth, exchanging subsequent alterations, until we both began to sense that the work was nearing completion. We did this on ten occasions. All ten will be exhibited in the UW-Madison exhibition. No doubt the effect will be stunning.



In another area of the exhibition, I will also be exhibiting thirteen design-related images that are part of my long-term, continuing research (as a design historian) of World War I Allied naval camouflage. The theme uniting these artifacts is high difference or disruptive ship camouflage, which was referred to at the time as dazzle painting or dazzle camouflage.

Among the items exhibited are restored government photographs from the time period, full-color reproductions of diagrams of the camouflage patterns, and my own recent hypothetical camouflage schemes, derived from historical works of art.

 See examples, reproduced above.

A highlight of the exhibition will be a symposium, titled Evolving Graphic Design, to be held on June 23 and 24, in the Art Loft Conference Room, Art Lofts Building, in the Department of Art, University of Wisconsin-Madison at 111 North Frances Street, in Madison. I will participate in that symposium, by online presentation.

mimicry, empathy, brevity, closure and camouflage

 Monroe Books in Berlin, Germany has recently published a book of camouflage-related essays and artworks titled Mimicry-Empathy, edited by German artist Susanne Bürner. Shown above is the front cover. On the back cover (below) is a list of those whose work is included.

Among the essays is our latest, titled "Simpatico on the patio: Empathic art, mimicry, and camouflage." That essay, which deals with the functional link between empathy, closure, and camouflage, is also available online here.  

Thelma Cudlipp's satirical view of camouflage corps

American Women's Camouflage Corps (1918)

Above One of various US government photographs from World War I of the American Women’s Camouflage Corps. A few years ago, we curated and designed a public exhibition of this and other photographs from the same unit. All items from that exhibit can now be accessed online.

Below are the sketches and humorous captions by Thelma Cudlipp for a satirical treatment of the same subject from a 1918 issue of Vanity Fair magazine. The artist/author was the American illustrator Thelma Somerville Cudlipp (1891-1983), who, through marriages and family links, is also sometimes known as Thelma Somerville Grosvenor Cudlipp Whitman. Having led an undoubtedly interesting life, she merits looking into.

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Thelma Cudlipp (sketches and text), "Camouflage! Oh, Where Have We Heard That Word Before?", from Vanity Fair, September 1918, p. 35—

ISN'T IT WONDERFUL how the very most fashionable women in America are helping to dethrone that whole darn Hohenzollern family? And isn’t it wonderful, too, to note the variety of activities in which their energies are beginning to count for the Allies? Take, for instance, the Women’s Camouflage Corps, of New York, which is doing such wonderful work up in the Bronx! Why, it really isn' t possible—because of the work of the corps there—to walk in the northern confines of our city without acknowledging the truth of the saying that "Things are not what they seem." It was obvious, from the beginning of the war, that the ladies would flock to the art of camouflage, as if drawn to it by some natural inherited instinct. For, is a woman—we ask you—ever as happy as when she is persuading us that when she offers us one thing, it is, in reality, another? And so, when the vogue of camouflage came along and gave the girls an opportunity to resort to their favorite occupation of dissembling, why, that's all there was to it. The incidents mirrored on this page are the results of recent and actual experiences on the part of Vanity Fair.

Here is a rather saddening incident. Private Phylisse Stuyvesant has, for a week or more, been annoying her sister members of the Camouflage Corps in a great variety of ways. All of the girls have been doing their best to “sit on her”—but so far, without success. Here, however. we see the snub actually accomplished—not by the girls, to be sure, but by a vagrant cook, who, with a strolling laundress, is out for a little alfresco picnic.

Horrid predicament of Lieutenant Corinne de Puyster, who is acting as guide and cicerone for a French General of note, who has graciously consented to visit the Ladies Camouflage Camp. Lieutenant de Puyster, determining, inwardly, to give Sergeant Esme Vanderbilt at least ten days in the guard-house for having camouflaged her Sherry's lunch basket so as to make it appear to be but an innocent and inoffensive bit of the parade ground.

And here is a really tragical incident, as a result of which Vanity Fair almost went without its accustomed liquid refreshment on its recent visit to the ladies' camp. The girls had camouflaged a case of Bevo [near beer] to look like a cross-section of a rocky pasture, with the distressing result that it took three privates in the ladies' corps upwards of twenty minutes to find the precious fluid. The discovery of it was only accomplished by implicit obedience of the terse orders: “Ladies! Forward on all fours.”

So many people are saying that Vanity Fair is an improper magazine—what with its troupes of barefoot dancers and its portraits of the girls in the Follies—that we hesitated a good deal before printing this rather questionable illustration, displaying, as it does, two gentlemen about to take a swim in the river Bronx, all unaware of the fact that Captain Gladys Astor is lurking, not more than five paces away, cleverly disguised as a stunted nut tree.

And this is what led to the very biggest scandal of all, a tragedy so tremendous that it led to the withdrawal of Major Muriel Van Rensselaer from the Camouflage Corps. The Major, disguised as a sassafras bush, was, all unwillingly, forced to overhear a lengthy, candid and snappy account of herself and all her activities—just exactly what all the girls really thought of her—from two horrid privates in her own company.

Hurried Vibrations | Has Futurism Found Its Place?

USS Rinia with dazzle camouflage pattern (c1918). Public domain.

Laura Bride Powers ART. Oakland Tribune (Oakland CA). June 23, 1918, p. 24—

FUTURIST ART ON SHIPS  

At last the futurists have found themselves. Rather has the world found them.

Their theories and practice are adopted by the navy department to camouflage the ships that go down to the sea, as witness the good ship that rode in the harbor during the week, a potpourri of colored angles, lines and geometric forms that recall visions of that famous room at the Palace of Fine Arts during the Exposition—the “My God Room.” You remember it? *

Dynamism—movement—is what the perpetrators of the pictures were striving for, movement as opposed to a static state.

And is not that the thing sought for by the navy—a movement of objects that are disassociated with ships to the consternation of the gunners who roam the sea?

Objects in movement multiply themselves, becoming deformed in pursuit of each other, like hurried vibrations. This does thus does the law work out for the protection of the ships of the allies, justifying the theories of Balla, Picasso, Picabia and the rest.

The stories of Courbet, and Manet, and Monet and Degas are fresh in mind—the concept of the people; then their acceptance of the innovators, followed by their standardization, by which the rest of the world of art is measure. Such is the psychology of the art of the mediocre.

Shall the war vindicate the theories of Balla and his confreres? more>>>

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* For more about the "My God Room," see Michael Williams, A Brief Guide to the Palace of Fine Arts: Panama-Pacific International Exposition. San Francisco Art Association, 1915.

Room No 67
Here are shown many characteristic examples of the "new notes" in the most modern American art. Here are assembled a breezy company of ultra-radicals; revolutionaries, some of them, mingled with several older men who have definitely won their places. It is said that one of the rooms in the Annex was generally known as the "My God Room!" because the ejaculation—usually a heart-felt cry for help—was drawn from so many visitors by the appalling nature of some of the weird freaks which whirlingly burst upon their stupefied vision. This room, No. 67, cannot of course compete with the room in the Annex, but it certainly has its "My God" spots.

Camouflage Artifacts at Spencer Museum of Art

Above Photograph of the interior of a World War I British submarine under construction. The intense exterior lighting is casting shadows on the workers inside, and providing an apt demonstration of the disruption of shapes using shadows. This photograph was published in France in Le Miroir magazine on February 10, 1918, with the following caption—

The British fleet, which was by far the most powerful in the world during peacetime, has increased its superiority since the beginning of the war thanks to the strengthening of its ordnance. It is not possible, of course, to offer precise information on this subject. The fact that the German fleet remains in the port indicates that our enemies are not fooled by the results of naval combat. Our allies have launched many submarines. Here is one of them under construction.

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On March 2, 2019, an exhibition opened at the Spencer Museum of Art on the campus of the University of Kansas in Lawrence. It continues through June 9, but unfortunately I found out about it only recently and won't be able to see it. Titled Camouflage and Other Hidden Treasures, it includes a selection of artifacts from the Eric Gustav Carlson WWI Collection, which includes nearly 4,000 items from the Great War. The current exhibition includes only about 1/60th of the full collection.

Over the years, Kansas and Missouri have increasingly become prime locations for research pertaining to art, architecture and design in connection with camouflage. In Kansas City MO (as we mentioned in an earlier blog), there is the National WWI Museum (formerly the Liberty Memorial), which features what remains of a huge WWI diorama, called the Pantheon de la Guerre. Completed by French artists in 1918, it originally included about five thousand full-length figures, including identifiable images of some of the French army's camoufleurs.

Also of significance is the Missouri State Capitol Building in Jefferson City MO. It was designed by New York architects  Evarts Tracy and Egerton Swartwout in 1917. When the US entered WWI that year, Tracy was among the first officers in the American Camouflage Corps. Prior to that, one of the co-founders of a civilian forerunner to that unit was Iowa-born sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry, who was commissioned to create the figure of Ceres that stands on top of the building's dome. Inside the building, in the House Lounge, are the famous Missouri history murals by Thomas Hart Benton, who was a US Navy camoufleur during WWI. Also inside is a mural (with two camouflaged ships in the background) titled The Navy Guarded the Road to France. It was painted in 1921 by US naval camoufleur Henry Reuterdahl, whom we've often blogged about.

There's yet another option: The Ulrich Museum of Art at Wichita State University in Wichita KS owns what may be the largest collection of paintings and other artworks by Frederick Judd Waugh, who was a prominent American ship camoufleur during WWI.

Two New UK Dazzle Camouflage Exhibitions

Norman Wilkinson ship camouflage schematic (1917)

Above One of about ninety dazzle camouflage schemes designed by British artist Norman Wilkinson in 1917, and given to the US (which had just entered the war) for use on its own merchant ships. It appears that these were never used, but have been in storage since that war. Only recently have they been posted online at the NARA website. However, the online versions are not always in very good shape. We have digitally restored this one—it has been cleaned, its exposure and color adjusted, and water stains removed. The original digital version remains for verification of course, as does the paper artifact.

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Thanks to British marine camouflage scholar James Taylor, we have learned about two current dazzle ship camouflage exhibitions at museums in the UK. They are listed with online links below.

DAZZLE: Continuing the Art of Disruption is currently on exhibit at the Southampton City Art Gallery. It opened on October 19, 2018 and continues through March 9, 2019.

A second exhibition will be available very soon. Titled DAZZLE & THE ART OF DEFENCE, it will open on February 18 and continue through April 25, 2019 at the Arts University Bournemouth.

French Maritime Museum Exhibit | Installation Views

Views of dazzle exhibition in Brest, France (2018)

In an earlier post, we featured an Australian cruise boat that had been dazzle-painted by artist Katy Mutton. Launched in October 2016, it operated on Lake Burley Griffin (Canberra, Australia) for twelve months. Since then, Katy Mutton has moved on to other challenges. Most recently, as shown in the photos in her news update (above), she visited the Musée national de la Marine in Brest, France, to see the on-going exhibit about World War I ship camouflage.

Note in particular the photo at the bottom left, which shows an exquisite model of the port side of an eccentric camouflage scheme designed by Frank M. Watson, called the Watson-Norfolk System (c1917).

Gerald Thayer Talks on Camouflage at Ithaca 1919

G.H. Thayer, Cottontail Rabbit (1909). Public domain.

Above Gerald H. Thayer, painting of a cottontail rabbit, first published as an illustration in his Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (NY: Macmillan, 1909). There are 16 full-color illustrations in the book, nearly all of which were collaborative paintings. In this example, Gerald painted the rabbit figure, while the background (as credited) was completed by Abbott H. Thayer and Emma B. Thayer.

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CAMOUFLAGE ONLY NATURE IMITATION: Is Shown By Gerald Thayer in Lecture at Reorganization Meeting of Cayuga Bird Club in Ithaca Journal (Ithaca NY), Tuesday, March 18, 1919—

An unusual and enlightening lecture was given last night in Roberts Hall when Gerald H. Thayer, son of the famous artist, Abbott H. Thayer, spoke on “Camouflage in War and in Nature,” illustrating the talk with lantern slides showing birds and animals in their natural surroundings, in some cases so perfectly concealed that they could not be seen until pointed out, and concluding with illustrations of the use of camouflage in war. Not only did Mr. Thayer show what looked like trees, bushes and grasses and then prove that they were birds and animals, but he reversed the process, showing what looked like birds and animals, and proved to be only sections of trees, bushes, etc.

Mr. Thayer’s lecture was the first to be given this year under the auspices of the Cayuga Bird Club, and in introducing him, Louis A. Fuertes spoke of the success of the club in past years, of the wonderful opportunities for the study of birds offered in Ithaca and of the bird sanctuary with its recorded list of more than 200 different species of birds-and a wealth of flowers in the spring. He explained that the club is now entering upon a period of reorganization after the war, and asked all who were interested to renew their memberships.

“Abbott Thayer and his son GeraId have worked together on the wonderful problems of protective coloration,” said Mr. Fuertes “and the resuIt is the art of camouflage, which did not prove successful when presented to the military authorities of this country and of England, but which was eagerly taken up by the French and developed by them, stolen by the Germans, and given to their allies.”

“There are three principal kinds of camouflage in nature and in war,” said Mr. Thayer. “The first consists of hiding things, making them more or less disappear, and plays an important part in nature. The second type is [the] making of fake things, things which are made to look like something else.”

In ilIustration of this second type in war he spoke of the use of supposed stumps of trees, made out of iron and covered with bark, in which telephones and observers could be concealed, and which looked so exactly like the real thing that they were seldom noticed by the enemy. Another instance which he told as a true story of the war was that of the aviator who came back to headquarters and urged the captain in charge to train some guns on a cemetery just back of the enemy lines. When the captain objected to firing on a cemetery, he explained that when he flew over early that morning the “cemetery” was on the opposite side of certain field.

As a good iIlustration of this type of camouflage in nature he spoke of the walking stick, measuring worms and caterpillars which are made to look exactly like a twig.

“The third kind of camouflage can best be used with things that move around,” said Mr. Thayer “and has been developed during the past year, particularly on ships at sea, painting them in striking contrasts, making them harder to hit and sometimes making them look as if they were going in a different direction, an iIlusion which proved particularly deceptive when seen through the periscope of a submarine. He explained that the object in painting these vessels in stripes and blotches was not to conceal them, as so many supposed, but to make them look strange, so that they were hard to locate. In the early years of the war, he added, they did try to make vessels resemble clouds, sea horizon, etc., but were unsuccessful for nothing but the whitest white will disappear against the sky.

He spoke of the sinking of the Titanic when she struck an iceberg on a clear, starry night, and explained the catastrophe by the fact that the white iceberg must have been practicalIy invisible against the sky.

Herbert Barnard John Everett | More Information

As a quick follow-up to our previous post, here's the link to a wonderful essay by art historian Gwen Yarker on British painter Herbert Barnard John Everett. We are delighted to learn that a biography is in process—he deserves it, with more than 1,000 of his oil paintings in UK collections.

Herbert Barnard John Everett | An Interview in 1919

William Orpen, Portrait of John Everett (c1900)

In earlier posts, we've praised the wartime paintings of dazzle-painted ships by British artist [Herbert Barnard] John Everett (1876-1949). Many of his paintings are in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich UK. The painting reproduced above is not a painting by Everett, but a portrait of him by William Orpen (c1900). Shown below is one of Everett's paintings of camouflaged ships, titled Convoy (1918). Both works by Orpen and Everett are in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, and are listed by Wikipedia as public domain.

According to art historian Gwen Yarker—

In the spring of 1918 he [Everett] was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to complete some drawings and paintings of wartime London docks and the Thames which were subsequently exhibited in America.

In connection with that American exhibition and a subsequent one in London, Anne Morton Lane (London correspondent for the New York Mail and Express) interviewed Everett and prepared a substantial news article. Published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond VA) on Monday, January 13, 1919, p. 7, the article was accompanied by a portrait photograph of Everett (not shown here).

Reprinted below is the entire article—

“DAZZLE SHIPS” HELPED TO CONQUER HUN MENACE
Interesting Story Is Told in Pictures, the Work of Artist John Everett
FORM A REMARKABLE RECORD
Ship Painting in War Time Proves One of Many Methods Used by Entente Seamen to Puzzle German U-Boat Commanders

LONDON, January 12—Recently there was begun an exhibition in New York of pictures which have received the sanction of the British government to be shown outside Great Britain.

They are the work of John Everett, a highly interesting and distinguished English artist, who has made a specialty of seascapes and pictures of ships on the high seas and at rest in docks.

Early in the war, when the use of camouflage as applied to shipping became a special and practical portion of defense at sea, as the camouflage of guns, airplanes, munition sheds and other machinery of battles became a component part of war on land, Mr. Everett saw the wonderful possibilities that might accrue from a record of the commerce afloat as a pictorial history in color.

As we all know, now that hostilities have ceased, the mystery that, surrounded all ports and shipping in the allied countries was a necessary as it was dense. Therefore, it was only after many weary months that Mr. Everett, through personal persuasion, practical influence and genuine hard work, was accorded the privilege of His Majesty’s government of visiting the great docks of London and Liverpool, in order that he might make pictures of the amazing transformation, wrought by paint and scientific knowledge upon the units of the fleet.

ALL MAY SOON SEE HOW CAMOUFLAGE WORK WAS DONE

And now that the U-boats have ceased from troubling and the submarines are at rest within British waters, by permission of the government, Mr. Everett is now able to display the fruit of his two or three years work in dockyards, at exhibitions in London and New York.

I went to see Mr. Everett the other day in his interesting and remarkable studio, which is situated off the beaten track of general traffic in a sort of side-tracked field in St John’s Wood, a well-known artists’ quarter of suburban London.

This studio of Mr. Everett’s is a converted barn of great size and with unusual lighting qualifications. Its walls are lined and a large portion of the floor space filled with pictures of ships.

All these ships display camouflage designs, and they represent many vessels that have plied their way between England and America in wartime, but also to many thousands, who have heard of the strange masquerading of ships on the high seas.

In England the painting and designing of sea-going vessels has been carried on under the direction of a department known colloquially as the “dazzle office,” and Mr. Everett was appointed as it illustrator.

Now that the curtain is being lifted from some of the amazing secrets of the admiralty and War Office, Mr. Everett has many interesting things to relate concerning the art of “dazzle-painting” as used, and the possibility of its continuation after the war.

“DAZZLE SHIPS” IS GOOD DESCRIPTIVE TERM

“Although the word camouflage is an excellent one that has been adopted by the Anglo-Saxon tongue since its uses in war time have been discovered,” said Mr. Everett. “I think that the descriptive title of “dazzle ship” is much more illustrative when applied to the use of this art at sea.

And, after all, it is not a very new ideas, because we are told that the Ancient Greeks painted their ships with big eyes and cheeks upon their bows to give them a terrifying expression of wisdom that might serve to confound their enemies.

But we moderns did better than this in war time: we had out ships painted in such a way that their strange colorings, and curious stripings and curves would puzzle the enemy and serve to give rise to uncertainty by dazzling the eyes of the watchful foe.

In fact, as I very early discovered in my work as official artist to the dazzle department, the object of ship painting in war time has really very little to do with the real meaning of the French word camouflage, which means the dissimulation of natural objects with the landscape by protective coloring.

Dazzle-painting was invented by the well-known sea painter, Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson, RNVR, and it is the only system which has practically solved the problem of the variation of light, and which attains its object not only eluding the submarine by invisibility, but by confusing its observers.

MAKES IT DIFFICULT TO CALCULATE SHIP’S COURSE

“By recognizing the limitations of paint, the art of dazzle as applied to ocean-going ships, pushes back these limitations as far as possible and makes the object of its being not invisibility but distortion: It makes the problem of calculating the course of a vessel extremely difficult.

Each design, as you will notice in the many pictures I have painted of ships, is entirely different from the other. No two dazzle-ships are alike in detail, either in color design, and the success of Commander Wilkinson’s inventions were so marked during all the weary war time months, that they were adopted by every entente nation with a marine service.

I think that this is one of the reasons why my pictures when they are seen in New York will be of extreme interest to Americans. They will then be able to see exactly the source from which came all those wonder ships that braved the perils of the sea during the past four years.

I have shown my portraits of these masquerading voyagers in English waters and British docks—settings that perhaps will be better appreciated nowadays in the New World, because it is so closely linked in these days with the old.”

BRITISH WARSHIP HIT AMIDSHIP, NO LIVES LOST

Among the pictures which will be seen by permission of the British government are HMS Victorian Bringing a Convoy of American Troops into London. Mr. Everett told me that this ship was afterwards torpedoed. She was hit amidships, but by some miracle she was brought into port and no lives were lost. Another picture is of the steamship Shuma discarding timber.

“This,” explained Mr. Everett. “is a ship with an interesting dazzle, showing a great deal of light sky-blue picked out with black and white.” Another ship shows a dazzled flour ship, and another the conversion of the Cunard steamship Nanerig into an armored cruiser.

Those and many other pictures of a like kind display with extraordinary clearness something of the practical side of what those who have “gone down to the sea in ships” have had to do in order to confound the enemy.

John Everett, Convoy (1918)

TELL VIVID STORY OF WAR TRAFFIC BY SEA

There is something very dramatic about these pictures of Mr. Everett’s. They give the story of the life of the sea, and the traffic across that great grim stretch of water between England and America with wonderful vividness. The artist confesses that these pictures, painted under circumstances both difficult and dangerous, are the most fascinating work he has ever undertaken.

“The painting of these pictures, which I regard as a sort of diary of the merchant service at sea during war time,” he said, “has given me an immense belief in, and admiration for, this dazzle theory; the whole point of it has been the deception of the submarine as to the course of the ship, thus causing a miscalculation of her distance. You ask me if the dazzle ships will die with war-time; I suppose for practical purposes they will do so.

But it seems to me a pity, for undoubtedly they have lent a beauty and color of ocean-going vessels and have transformed dirty old tramp steamers into objects of remarkable harmony of shape and hue.”

Certainly amongst the strange records which the war leaves behind it, these paintings of “dazzle ships” by John Everett will not be among the least curious. It has been suggested that the dazzled colors might still be used in peace time, not to distort, but to emphasize shipping. As Mr. Everett himself suggests, it certainly might be diverted from its past uses to the purpose of making a ship’s course more clear and thus bringing about an avoidance of collisions.

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Note Art historian Gwen Yarker (cited above) is one of seven speakers at a day-long "dazzle study day" that will take place from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm on Saturday, June 30 at the University of South Hampton, UK.  She will be speaking about John Everett's paintings of camouflaged ships.

Dazzle Camouflage Exhibit at St Barbe Museum UK

Poster for St Barbe Museum Dazzle Exhibition Workshop (2018)

Above Just recently posted is this magnificent poster, featuring a WWI-era painting of a dazzle-painted ship by British artist Harry Hudson Rodmell (1896-1984).

The poster is advertising one of the events that supplement an important exhibition—titled Dazzle: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art—at the St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery, in Lymington, Hampshire UK. This major exhibition, curated by author and historian James Taylor (working in liaison with Steve Marshall) opened on June 16 and continues through September 23, 2018.

It features original ship models, ship camouflage plans, and historic artworks, including unforgettable views of camouflaged ships by Norman Wilkinson, Edward Wadsworth, Montague Dawson, and John Everett. What a remarkable opportunity—to think that these important works will be on view at one time in a single place. Don't miss it.

Exhibition webpage at St Barbe Museum and Art Gallery

We would have hoped to have been there, to particpate in a day-long "dazzle study day" from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm on Saturday, June 30, at the University of South Hampton. See schedule on website.

There are seven major speakers, including James Taylor (the exhibition curator), architect Camilla Wilkinson (granddaughter of dazzle system originator Norman Wilkinson), Simon Stephens (National Maritime Museum), Ed Yardley, Gwen Yarker, Sue Prichard, and Liv Taylor.

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Don't forget the on-going French camouflage exhibit as well (mentioned in an earlier post) that continues through December 31, 2018, at the National Maritime Museum in Brest, France.

Role of American Women in WWI Camouflage

American Women Camoufleurs

Ship Camouflage Exhibit at French Maritime Museum

Poster for French exhibition (2017)

Above Poster for a current exhibition titled RAZZLE DAZZLE: L'art contre-attaque! at the National Maritime Museum in Brest, France. The exhibit, which pertains to World War I and to ship camouflage in particular, opened on October 20, 2017 and continues through December 31, 2018. Poster and installation designed by Collectif XYZ.

Additional items from the exhibition, including a view of the setting during a session with children, are reproduced below. For detailed information in English, visit this page at the museum website. Courtesy of Jean-Yves Besselièvre, museum administrator.

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TEXANS AT PORTS ON GULF BAFFLED ENEMY SUBS BY CAMOUFLAGE. At Port Arthur, Beaumont, Houston and Orange They Made Ships Look Like Something Else. San Antonio Evening News, January 31, 1919, pp. 1 and 3—

Bound by oath to reveal nothiing about their activities, prohibited from so much as a reference to their vocation or the nature of the work they were doing from day to day, a silent army of Texas workmen during the war were engaged in doing a service to Uncle Sam that just now is coming to light with the lifting of the censorship ban. This work was the camouflaging of ships, upon which the very fortune of the war hinged.

WWI dazzle camouflage design by French artists (c1918)

"Some of the best work of camouflaging ships was done in Texas. I have also found that as a whole the men who worked in the Texas shipyards were more patriotic than some of those in the Eastern shipyards. The Texans proved themselves 100 per cent Americans." With that statement Follette Isaacson, chief camoufleur of the Gulf District, summed up the work of camouflaging ships in Texas. Mr. Isaacson was in San Antonio Thursday in conference with the organizers of the Armenian relief campaign.

The Gulf district includes the shipbuilding ports of Beaumont, Orange, Morgan City, Louisiana, and Houston, and the fuel base of Port Arthur, Texas. Mr. Isaccson's headquarters were at Beaumont the greater part of the time, although he superintended and directed the work of applying the camouflage designs to the emergency fleet ships and the oil tankers in all cities of the district.

Despite the fact that Mr. Isaacson begins his explanation of camouflage with the bromide statement that "camouflaging ships is a scientific business which was developed by American brain after America's 'armed neutrality' period of the war," his recital of this phase of winning the war is no less interesting than the erstwhile "Once upon a time" fairy stories.

According to Mr. Isaason, the United States was divided into eleven shipbuilding or seaport districts, each one of which was under the direction of a chief camoufleur.

WWI camouflaged ship model

Designers, Architects, Mural Painters Make Camoufleurs

Working under the direction of the chief camoufleur was an assistant camoufleur and a corps of camoufleurs. The camouflage designs were originated by the Navy Department, Bureau of Construction and Repair, and in turn were applied to the ships by the camoufleurs who worked under the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The camoufleurs usually were men who had been commercial designers, architects and mural painters, while the executive work was handled by former business men.

In the Gulf district the emergency fleet ships were camouflaged at Beaumont, Orange and Houston, and Morgan City, Louisiana, there being a shipyard at each place. At Port Arthur, Texas, which is one of the fuel bases for the United States Navy and also one of the chief exporting ports of the country, all tankers were camouflaged.

Camouflage as an art and a science has passed through an evolution during the course of the recent great war, according to Mr. Isaacson. Beginning with the painting of ships in a monotone color that harmonized with the atmospheric color of the sea landscape, the next step in camouflage was the combination of colors.

This combination of colors, Mr. Isaacson explained further, was made in an effort to adapt the ship to the changing atmospheric conditions of different localities and did not represent waves as is popularly supposed. For this reason a combination of colors would be worked out to suit the variant conditions of different localities, as the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. This system was worked out by W[illiam] A[ndrew] Mackay, a mural painter of New York City.

The third step was the Wilkinson Dazzle system of camouflage which was worked out by an officer of the English navy who demonstrated the feasibility of this system to the United States Government. This system was used in the United States in the latter part of 1917.

Distortion Camouflage Is Most Successful of All

"But," continued Mr. Isaacson, "it remained to American brain to work out the most perfect system of all, known as the distortion system. While the Wilkinson Dazzle camouflage proved fairly successful, the distortion camouflage was the most successful of all."

Distortion camouflage, as its name implies, Mr. Isaacson explained, distorts the accepted outline of the ship. This outline often was so distorted that the enemy could not tell in which direction the ship was going or whether they were looking at it broadside or by the stern. Since the submarie usually operated at a distance of a thousand yards, it was necessary for them to come closer to attack, which brought on disastrous results to them after the American boats were armed and protected. Again, some forms of distortion camouflage also served to convey the impression that the ship was two or three points off of its actual course.

Installation view of French exhibit (2017)

The particular form that created this impression was the perspective distortion, which was the arrangement of color masses in conformance with the perspective law of the vanishing point, which is that objects tend to grow smaller or vanish with distance. By arranging the color masses so that they followed a certain direction, the distance to the ship and its course was misrepresented.

Couldn't Tell If It Was Coming or Going

Another form of distortion camouflage that was highly successsful was the equalization of masses. The relative structural spaces of the ship, the comparative width of its bow and the length of its broadside were broken up or distorted by camouflage designs. In addition to this, the designs usually were applied in such a manner that the ship would appear to be going in an opposite direction from what it actually was. The stack, being one of the most important factors in creating this illusion, was also camouflaged in keeping with the other part of the design. In nearly all cases the equalization of masses, destroying the accepted outline as it did, makes it impossible to tell whether a ship is approaching broadside or by the bow.

A third phase of distortion is camouflage through color value, which is the arrangement of graduated colors in a camouflage design according to their value, as black, heavy gray and gray-white. The colors most frequently used in all camouflage were blue, black, gray-white and blue-gray.

"The whole thing is a question of science," Mr. Isaacson concluded, "science built on the biological principle of protective coloring. Camouflage in one form or another has always been in existence. The chameleon, the lizard that takes on the color of its surroundings when it is frightened, is a good example of protective coloring. In camouflaging ships we merely added scientific principles to the biological principle of protective coloring."