not a camoufleur / Maine artist Willard W. Cummings

Willard W. Cummings

So, who actually served as a wartime camoufleur? It’s not always easy to answer. For example, I recently ran across published references to an American artist named Willard W. Cummings (1915-1975). He was a portrait painter, whose prominence is mostly due to having co-founded the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine. The school was launched in 1946, after World War II had ended, on property his family owned.

Cummings had studied art at the Académie Julian in Paris, the Art Students League in New York, and at Yale University. He served in the US Army during WWII.  

When he died in 1975, an obituary in the New York Times (July 25) reported that “When he joined the Army in 1941 he was put to work painting camouflage.” But that is not entirely true. According to an interview with him, which took place in 1973 and which can now be found online at the Archives of American Art, his role as a camoufleur never panned out. He was sent to Fort Belvoir, where camouflage training was taking place, but instead of actually practicing that, “A colonel asked him to do a portrait, and this led to his being named an official army artist.” The same thing had happened to Norman Rockwell during World War I, when he was reassigned from camouflage to the task of making portraits of the top brass.

In Cummings’ case, it led to postwar commissions in which he painted the portraits of civilian celebrities, among them Bette Davis, Pablo Casals, Margaret Chase Smith (the senator from Maine), and Adali Stevenson. But he was never really a camouflage artist.

Chalk Talk / Iowa's Herb Hake Meets Old Man Camouf

Above Herbert V. Hake (1903-1980) was a well-known faculty member who taught scenic design in the theatre department at Iowa State Teachers College (now University of Northern Iowa) in Cedar Falls. He was also a pioneering contributor to radio and television broadcasting, a writer, and a cartoonist. Using his cartoons, he gave amusing, informative “chalk talks” on various topics, including local history.  In 1968, he published A Cartoon History of Iowa, in which (as is common in chalk talks) he drew comic figures which, by adding a few select details, were transformed into different things. Shown above is one of those drawing sequences, in which he begins with what appears to be a meaningless drawing on the left, while on the right it turns into an upsidedown portrait (made of potatoes, wheat and corn) of Tama Jim (US Secretary of Agriculture James Wilson). Below is the same drawing viewed upsidedown, which some people may mistake for Mister Potato Head.

•••

Roy Moulton, LEM EXTEMPORIZES ON CAMOUFLAGE IN BIG BURG in The Boston Post, May 17, 1918—

Somewhere in New York.

Dear Folks—Old Man Camouf or whoever it was in France who invented camouflage, started something. Maybe M. Camouf knew what he was doing, but I doubt it.

It has spread over this town like a pest of locusts. Of all conditions attendant upon the war and which have been gently wafted across the pond as a direct result of war, camouflage is the most generally in the limelight.

It is being used for purposes never intended by its inventor.

After the New York people forget all about the war they will remember the wave of camouflage which attended it.

Not New to the Ladies
Not that camouflage is anything new. Of course not. There's nothing new under the sun. Men
were practicing camouflage long before this war and the ladies, too, bless 'em, but they didn’t know what they were doing. It took M. Camouf to come along and tell them and to name the art after himself. Maybe he is proud of it.

The first waiter in the world who used the first "dicky" shirt front, practiced camouflage, although he didn't know what he was doing at the time. Then there were the Ascot ties, which effectually concealed the absence of a shirt; then the cuffs, which could be cleverly fastened inside the coat sleeves. In fact there were a million just such contrivances before M. Camouf came along.

When M. Camouf invented his famous art, he meant it merely to cover military appurtenances. By the use of camouflage, a Ford could be made to look like a mere garbage can, sitting serenely on the landscape and minding its own business. A large gun could be made to look like a shock of corn. A soldier could be made to look like a pacifist, etc. So far, so good.

But, during its journey aross the ocean, M. Camouf's art became inflated with its own importance and enlarged its scope. In France it confined itseif to the military. In America it confined itself to nothing.

It spread out like a fan covering every phase of human life and every form of human endeavor. It covered art, letters, religion, politics, society and vers libre. It stopped at nothing.

It was imbued with the spirit of liberty as soon as it struck the land of the free and when it started cutting up it didn't know when to stop. It is going yet.

35-Cent Dog Sells for $600
Just the other day on Broadway a man took a 35-cent mongrel pup that he had found shivering behind an ash barrel, put a $7 blanket on him with “Prince" embroidered in gold letters, and sold the dog to an actress for $600 as a genuine Norwegian fish-hound. That shows what M. Camouf's art can do with the aid of American genius.

A $15-a-week telephone adJuster thought he would like to be a French marquis. So he dressed up like two or three French marquises and borrowed about $100,000. He tried to borrow $50,000,000 from J. P. Morgan & Co. and nearly got away with it.

By the aid of M. Camouf's gentle art, cabaret managers have been able to paim off genuine East Side Hawaiian dancers on an unsuspecting public. The shredded wheat skirts and the brown stain for the skin and the trick is done. In these cases even old M. Camouf, himself, would be hoodwinked.

I don't know of anybody in this village who has the art of camouflage down finer than my old friend Hank Stevens. He is in reality 95 per cent camouflage and 1 per cent Hank. He can take a
$9 bank roll and make it look like a Belgium indemnity. He seems to have a natural affection for money which expresses itself eloquently in his unwillingness to part with any of it, even
under the most favorable circumstances.

Why Hank Gets Nervous
I have never seen Hank when he had not been laboring under a terrific nervous strain. Something has always just happened to him. He has either just lost a tremendous sum of money on the curb or somebody has wished a couple of maiden aunts on him for life. 

Accidents of this sort befall him so rapidly that he never has time to get to work at a regular job. It is natural for those who feel sorry for Hank to do something to express their sympathy. They either feed him a good dollar table d'hote lunch or buy him a few internal applications over the mahogany.

I will never forget the first time I met Hank. I thought he was the saddest looking man I had ever seen. He was hanging over the edge of the mahogany like an umbrella somebody had left, down near the dried herring and clove dish. I had been introduced to him by a mutual friend who suddenly found something to do up in the other end of town.

"I am shad, tonight,” said Hank, by way of opening the conversation.

"That sounds fishy," I said, in my well-known jugular vein.

"No, it's no joke," said Hank. "I am shad. I had a great shorrow. I've had a lotta trouble."

I immediately felt sorry for Hank and bought him a 23-cent present. He cheered up for a moment but soon suffered a relapse which called for another treatment.

"It's tough," he said. "Gosh, I’m blue tonight. I buried the best uncle I ever had—21 years ago and I never got over it."

Hank began to weep and I stole quietly away and left him. At the door I met another friend, who asked: "Who has Hank lost now?”

"His favorite uncle,” I said.

"You must be a beginner with Hank," said the friend."He tossed me that favorite uncle over three years ago. Since then he has used up five aunts, seven cousins and at least 11 grandparents on me. If Hank ever runs out of deceased relatives, I figure I will save a lot of money. But he probably never will. He tells me his family came over In the Mayflower and he can trace them back to the 14th century.”

He Likes Athletics
Hank was the original little office boy who had a grandmother die every time there was a game out at the Polo Grounds.

Another sort of camoufleur is my friend Pete Henkle, Pete is the best-dressed man in New York and he does it all on one suit of clothes. I never got a note from Pete in my life, which was not written on Ritz or Waldorf stationery and if Pete ever had $4 at one time in his career as a Broadway ornament none of his friends ever knew it. He has been known to have $2.67 at one time or even perhaps $3.98, but never more. He can give the best imitation of Vincent Astor I have ever seen.

Pete has always just had a great stroke of luck. Either somebody has just met him in the Biltmore and handed him a check for $8,000,000, or he has just invented a patent submarine torpedo catcher and sold it to the government for a cool billion. If he is not organizing a billion dollar corporation to take over the potash mines or Guatemala, he is organizing a company to build a railroad from Rio de Janeiro to the City of Mexico. He never knows exactly where he is going to sleep that night, but wherever he does sleep, he dreams tremendous dreams.

His engraved calling cards are wonders. "Peter Stuyvesant Henkle, broker,” is what they say, and when he presents them at the desk in the Waldorf and asks to have Senator James Frothingham Frisby paged, he arouses a good deal of sincere admiration.

It is his habit to rush Into the St. Regis or the Gotham and ask if the Punjab of Afghanistan is
stopping there, and has inquired for him. Pete never misses a meal nor a night's sleep and he hasn't had a pay envelope placed in his hands since he was 13 years old. If a general shake down of all the citizens of New York were ordered suddenly to meet some great emergency, Pete would assay one suit of clothes, a pair of cuff links and, in his more prosperous moments, perhaps $1.76 in real money.

His High Marks
He has been interviewed at variousi times as "the last man who talked with the late President Diaz of Mexico,” "one of the few survivors of the Messina disaster," "an eye witness of the Black Tom explosion" and “the only man who ever interviewed the Grand Lama of Tibet."

Last week he started out bright and early Monday morning to pose as a personal friend of the late Abduli Hamid until some kind friend told him what was liable to happen to him and he desisted.

Pete quotes his friends freely, from General Joffre to former President Castro of Venezuela, and generally gets away with it.

Camouflage covers this village like a pall, from the imitation Russian marmot overcoats of Washington Heights to the bone-rimmed glasses and long hair of Greenwich Village and
the “genuine" Vermont maple syrup made on South Water Street, Chicago.

When ladies of 60 pass for 16 with their short skirts and cute hair and venerable old gentlemen of 70 get by as 35, with their toupées and raven-black mustaches and cigarettes, well may we
say that M. Camouf started something. Even if he didn't start it, he gave it a name, so he is partly responsible.

Even the financial reports are camouflaged. They tell us there is plenty of money in this country.

Sure there is, but somebody has got all of it.

Hoping you are the same, I remain,

Yours
LEM

he only wants the photograph, not the painting itself

The American painter Albert Sterner (1863-1946) was the father of architect Harold Sterner (1895-1976), who, during World War I, was assigned—as were Thomas Hart Benton and Louis Bouché—to make records of all camouflaged ships that entered various harbors (New York harbor in his case). The father was a friend of sculptor William Zorach, who recalled the following story in his autobiography—

William Zorach, Art Is My Life: The autobiography of William Zorach. Cleveland OH: World Publishing, 1967, p 131—

When the man [who had asked about his portraiture] came over to see Sterner, he told him his work was very expensive. That didn't bother the man and Sterner painted the portrait. The man studied it and was satisfied.    

He asked, “Can you tell me where I can get his photographed? I would like camouflageabout two hundred and fifty prints.”

Sterner said, "Peter Juley does all my photography. He'll be glad to do it and you will be well satisfied.”

He said, “Will you arrange to have two hundred and fifty prints made and have them sent to my office?”

Sterner said, "Certainly. And where shall I send the painting?”

“Oh,” he said, “you keep the painting. I don’t want the painting. I just want the photographs.”

So Sterner said, "What's the idea?"

The man said, "You know, I'm a broker and I want to send these photographs around to my clients so they can see I'm a very good looking and upright gentleman and they'll be glad to have me handle their business."

bandits in warpaint hold up New York restaurant / 1928

Painting by George Catlin

Above George Catlin, Portrait of Blue Medicine (Toh-to-wah-kon-da-pee), Medicine Man of the Eastern Sioux Dakota tribe. 19th Century. Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Public domain.

•••

REDSKINS GET $1,000 Loot. Brooklyn Gunmen Paint Faces Then Stage Holdup. East Liverpool Review. East Liverpool OH, July 16, 1928, p. 8—

NEW YORK, July I6—Chicago gun­men may claim the distinction of hav­ing first introduced the submachine gun into the hold up “racket,” but to Brooklyn goes credit for the first use of camouflage by stick up men. Three bandits today entered a State Street restaurant with their faces dis­guised with paint used in a manner like that employed formerly only by Indians on the warpath. The paint was streaked over their faces in weird patterns. The leader wore a heavy black hue under one eye, while the rest of his face was streaked a brilliant red. The proprietor and his staff were so astonished that the bandits es­caped with $1,000 in cash and jewelry before an alarm was raised. 

upsidedown reversible embedded and hidden figures

Above A reversible upsidedown drawing with embedded figures, in which George Washington is hidden in the space between his wife and himself. Artist, date and source unknown.

•••

Robertson Davies in New York Times Book Review, May 12, 1991—

About sixty years ago, I said to my father, “Old Mr. Senex is showing his age; he sometimes talks quite stupidly.” My father replied, “That isn’t age. He’s always been stupid. He’s just losing his ability to conceal it.”

Related Links

Embedded Figures, Art and Camouflage

Revisiting Gottschaldt: Embedded Figures in Art, Architecture and Design

standing behind and above, painting faces on his head

Painting by Frederick Rhodes Sisson (c1920-21)

There is a brief article in The Art Digest (February 15, 1943, p. 26) titled Sisson on Camouflage, which reads as follows—

Amherst College is to hear lectures on camouflage in the Plant Protection School. Frederick R. Sisson, instructor of drawing and painting at the Rhode Island School of Design, who has been conducting a course in camouflage there, to which students of Brown University are admitted, has been chosen for the task. Mr. Sisson acts also as critic of the Providence RI Journal.

We have mentioned Frederick Rhodes Sisson (1893-1962) in two earlier blog posts, here and here, in connection with his role as a studio assistant (one of three) to the well-known American painter Abbott Handerson Thayer. The other two assistants, in the last years of Thayer’s life, were Henry O’Connor, and David O. Reasoner, who would later become Thayer’s son in law, and who was a civilian ship camoufleur during WWI.

It is of particular interest to learn that Sisson lectured on camouflage at Amherst and RISD, since Thayer is regarded as a pioneering expert on protective coloration and natural camouflage, and is commonly referred to as the “father of camouflage.”

Sisson had two connections with RISD. Having grown up in Providence, he was a student at RISD prior to World War I, and then returned to teach there from 1924-1952. He was also an art critic for the Providence Journal from 1932-1950. When he retired in 1952, he moved to Falmouth MA, where he died ten years later.

RISD is at the center of this for another reason, as we have discussed in earlier posts. The Fleet Library at RISD is among the leading archival resources for the research of ship camouflage. One of the WWI American ship camoufleurs, who oversaw the painting of ships in the harbor, was an artist named Maurice L. Freedman. When the war ended in 1919, Freedman entered RISD as a student, and while there, he gave the art school his set of 450 color lithographic plans for American ship camouflage. It is a rare and remarkable resource. More information about it is here.

We also bring this up because, in recent years, there was an online notice about the sale of a painting attributed to Sisson (reproduced above), unsigned and undated, but stamped as part of his estate. It was labeled on the online post as a “3/4 portrait of Abbott Thayer in his later years.” I myself find it hard to believe that this is a portrait of Thayer. Sisson was presumably a capable painter. Indeed, among his responsibilities while working in Thayer’s studio was that of being able to make accurate copies of paintings that Thayer had started. This would then enable Thayer to complete his original painting, as well as apprentices’ copies, in differing ways, without spoiling the original effort.

Knowing that, one would expect a Sisson portrait of Thayer to be a convincing likeness of its aging sitter—which it is to a certain extent. What then is wrong with this picture? The most glaring problem is the hair. Thayer had begun to grow bald at a fairly early age. He had no hair on the top of his head, which prompted his children to refer to him as Shakespeare. Indeed, his bald pate was so hairless at top that his children amused themselves (and him) by standing behind and above him and painting faces on his head. So, one is led to wonder about the indentity of the sitter. The elderly man in the portrait has a receding hairline—that’s for certain—but he is far from bald on top and back.