Camouflaged Mermaids and Water Nymphs

 Above A cartoon from Harper's magazine (September 1919), with the caption: "To Decrease Visibility: Why not camouflage stockings?"
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The following paragraph (about camouflage beachwear) appeared in the Little Oddities of Life section of Illustrated World (1918), p. 369, with the heading "Mermaid Indulges in Camouflage"—

The surf seemed deserted. Scores of masculine "beach combers" and "sand lizards" thronged the Board Walk, watching the breakers roll in at Atlantic City and looking for mermaids and water nymphs. None were visible, yet one sported in the waves. The camera revealed what was not apparent to the eye. With her alluring figure hidden by a camouflaged swimming suit, this pretty bather dared the dangers of lurking U-boats and over-curious spectators. Thus the "now you see it; now you don't" bathing costume became the rage. It is rumored that next season these suits will be made for fat men and mothers-in-law. These bathing suits present great possibilities for the paragraphers and the wits, besides offering opportunities for clever filming to the comedy movie man. The Tired Business Man, however, will not suffer unnecessarily from eye strain on his vacation.

Dazzle Camouflage Swimsuits

The photograph above of British women beach goers dressed in dazzle-style swimwear appeared in The New York Tribune (June 15, 1919, p. 4), with the following caption:

The newest things in bathing suits brighten the beach at Margate, England. The "dazzle" designs of gayest hue defeat the usual purpose of camouflage, that of promoting low visibility.

A week later, the following article, titled “Camouflage Sylphs on Coney Island an Optical Illusion: Stripes of Bathing Costumes Used by Plump Persons to Conceal Full Extent of Their Plumpness,” appeared in the same newspaper (June 23, 1919, p. 7)—

The camouflage bathing suit made its appearance yesterday at Coney Island with the result that there were all sorts of complications among the 250,000 visitors to the resort. It became apparent that the idea, lately imported from Bath, Brighton and other English watering places, has manifold possibilities.

One very stout woman on the beach, for instance, had used such artistry in the arrangement of the ‘lightning stripes’ on her costume that she presented a positively sylph-like figure to the eyes to those some twenty yards or so distant. Many persons who had seen through the deception were amused by the antics of certain sportive young men, who from time to time started in the direction of the camouflaged damsel and then, when they obtained a close-up, kept right on going.

Many of the camouflage costumes were obviously homemade, and it was evident that their wearers had not had an opportunity to perfect themselves in more that the mere elementary principles of the art. In other words, they accentuated angles instead of rounding them, and emphasized rather than concealed avoirdupoise.

It is expected, however, that the new fad will be highly developed before the season is over. Following the service yesterday of fourteen summons upon persons who appeared in the streets in uncovered bathing suits the suggestion was made that camouflage might be perfected to the point where it would hide offenders from the eagle-eyed Coney Island police.

additional information

WWI Camouflage Chateau

During World War I, the US Committee on Public Information influenced public attitudes toward the war by sending out amusing news photographs. This one, taken at Camp Wadsworth in Spartanburg SC (c1918), is (according to its caption) an "elaborate example of camouflage…" Adorned by members of the 102nd Engineers, it was the living quarters of the 1st Battalion's Adjutant, Captain C.J. Dieges. A sign above the door reads "Chateau Camouflage." One hundred thousand soldiers trained at Camp Wadsworth, a major army mobilization center between 1917 and 1919.

French Tank Camouflage

According to the text on a postcard, this is a "French Renault Tank used in the [First] World War by the Republic of France…[and] is one of a number that was given to the United States in partial payment of the French War Debt. It still retains its original number, R.F. 2324 as it did during the war. This tank was presented to the James L. Noble Post, No. 3, Veterans of Foreign Wars of Altoona PA and was put in commission by members of that post."

Dazzle Camouflage on BBC-TV

Last week, BBC-TV ran a four-minute video on World War I ship camouflage, featuring an interview by John Sergeant on The One Show with UK scientist Nicholas Scott-Samuel. Here it is on YouTube. Note the copy of SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook (2012) on the table in the clip. Above (not from the program) is a photograph of a camouflaged US transport ship, arriving at Liverpool, as reproduced in War of Nations (1919).

Kissel Kar Kamouflage

This is a newspaper ad for a 1917 Kissel Kar ("Every Inch a Car"), manufactured by the Kissel Motor Car Company in Hartford WI. The company was founded in 1906 by Louis Kissel and his sons, who were owners of the firm until 1930. In addition to motor cars, the Kissels manufactured trucks (see below), hearses, fire trucks, taxis and utility vehicles.

During World War I, a news article in Motor West (October 15, 1917, p. 8) announced that W.L. Hughson (president of the Pacific Kissel Kar branch)—

has donated the famous Kissel military scout car, recently used to blaze the 'three nation run,' to the government department having the new operations of 'camouflage' in its charge. A committee of three prominent San Francisco artists will paint this car with color patches, which suggests nothing except the surrounding earth, trees, grain fields, sky, etc., making an exact facsimile of the cars now being used by the allies along the various war fronts.

In an issue of the Oakland Tribune ("Artist Are to Paint Motors, Plan 'Camouflage Carriages'," September 2, 1917, p. 32), it was stated that the three "prominent artists" on the Kissel Kar camouflage committee were architect Arthur Brown Jr, and artists [Ernest] Bruce Nelson and A. Sheldon Pennoyer. They were chairman, assistant chairman, and secretary, respectively, of the American Camouflage Western Division, as reported in "San Francisco Architects and Artists as Camoufleurs" in The Architect and Engineer of California (Vol 1 No 2, August 1917, p. 58).

In a later issue of the Oakland Tribune ("First Camouflage Auto Is Let Loose," October 28, 1917, p. 45), a second article reported on the progress of the touring camouflaged Kissel Military Highway Scout—

America's first camouflaged automobile has been let loose, and is now on the war path. The inhabitants of the Pacific Coast from Seattle to San Diego swear they are 'seeing things.' A sheriff who has a record for pinching speeders is out after the camoufleurs who committed 'camouflage' to prove that America's automobiles are as chameleon-like while on the war path as those in Europe.

For be it known that the military scout Kissel Kar of 'three-nation-fame' has emerged from the hands of the artists and is now keeping the sheriffs, police and judges sitting up nights planning how they can capture a thing they cannot see.

Reports from different points along the Pacific highway are to the effect that the car is practically invisible at a short distance. Its peculiar grassy marks blend in with its surroundings. Spots of green and pink with dabs of brown and red give such a mottled effect that no matter what speed it is going as far as the eye is concerned it registers 'here it comes and there it goes.'

That automobilists are taking a keen interest in the art of camouflaging is evident from the way the Kissel Motor Car Company is being besieged by inquiries from motorists for further information relative to painting automobiles so that they will not be discernible at a distance…

Small town constables through whose municipalities the car has gone, have sworn that they thought the whole scenery was rolling in on them, and were so astonished and surprised that they did not realize the car had passed them at a Ralph DePalma clip…

There are a handful of 1917 photographs here (mistakenly dated "1920s," and claiming to be "copyright protected") of the touring Kissel Military Highway Scout, dressed in disruptive camouflage garb.

We have also found a photograph (below) of trucks produced by Kissel, with camouflage applied, being shipped to Europe. The camouflage pattern on each is unique.

WWI camouflaged Kissel trucks

Camouflage Amusement Ride

Camouflaged tank amusement ride (1920)

World War I ended in 1919. A year later, in the January 1920 issue of Popular Mechanics, there was a short illustrated article about a new amusement ride, with the headline "Rough-Riding Tank as Amusement Car" (p. 113). As shown by the illustration above, it consisted of—

a set of four counterfeit tanks, dressed in camouflage paint, that bump around the inside of a wooden bowl with about an acre of surface. The make-believes are light, with transverse seats like a street car, and run on wheels instead of crawling on a flat tread; but they stagger along over carefully designed bumps and rough spots with satisfying realism…As an electric motor in the base rotates the tower, centrifugal force carries the tanks nearer and nearer the edge of the bowl, adding further zest to the adventure.

Notice there's a close-up view of one of the tanks in the bottom left corner of the illustration.

Actually, there was an even earlier link between amusement rides and camouflage, as shown by the two photographs below. As early as 1896, there were American amusement rides that were widely known as "razzle dazzle" (you can see that printed on a sign on the striped merry-go-round amusement ride in the first photo). In the same year, artist and naturalist Abbott H. Thayer began to publish his theories about protective coloration in nature, and now and then he used the terms "dazzle" and "razzle dazzle" in reference to high difference or disruptive camouflage. I suspect he was alluding to these popular amusement rides.

Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs (c1896)

Camouflage Textiles | Valerie Keating

Dazzle-based knit textiles by Valerie Keating

Designer Valerie Keating is a BA graduate from the School of Design at the Glasgow School of Art. Among the works that she produced for her portfolio was a Ship Shape: Dazzle Camouflage Collection, a series of innovative textiles (made with an industrial knitting machine), "inspired by the bold patterns of dazzle camouflage used by the Navy during the First World War." >>more…

Camouflage Artist | Ezra Winter

The Ezra Winter Project (online)

American artist Ezra Winter (1886-1949) was born near Traverse City MI. He attended Olivet College (in Michigan), then studied in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute, where he graduated in 1911. In the same year, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome, by which he was able to study for three years at the American Academy in Rome. Winter's prize was in the category of painting, for what was described in a news story at the time as "a large canvas called The Arts, a beautiful and graceful work." A young Denver architect, George Simpson Keyl , received the same prize in that category, while the Prix de Rome in sculpture that year was awarded to Harry Dickinson Thrasher.

Thrasher had grown up in Plainfield NH, where he had been a student of the most famous American sculptor at the turn of the century, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. As Thrasher was growing up, among his friends were Saint-Gaudens' son, named Homer (a theatre designer and, later, an arts administrator), and a young painter from Dublin NH named Barry Faulkner (he was a cousin and student of Abbott Handerson Thayer, the so-called "father of camouflage," and had studied with Augustus Saint-Gaudens as well). Later, Faulkner became a prominent muralist, and a friend of Ezra Winter, with whom he collaborated on several major projects.

When the US entered World War I, a unit for camouflage artists was formed by the US Army. One of the officers in charge of that unit was Homer Saint-Gaudens, while among the very first artists to join were Barry Faulkner and Harry Dickinson Thrasher. After a period of training on the grounds of the American University near Washington DC, their unit was deployed to France at the end of 1917. Of the camoufleurs, there were only two who didn't return—Everett A. Herter (the brother of US diplomat Christian Herter) and Harry Thrasher, both of whom were killed in France in 1918. Faulkner delivered the eulogy at Thrasher's funeral.

At the same time, Ezra Winter was in New York, where, as a civilian, he worked for the US Shipping Board, as a member of one of thirteen teams of camouflage artists (stationed at various ports around the country) who supervised the painting of dazzle camouflage schemes on thousands of commercial ships (called merchant ships). In charge of the unit that Winter was in was another prominent muralist, William Andrew Mackay. According to official policy, the artists assigned to ship painting were not responsible for the design of the camouflage plans, only for applying them.

Instead, the initial camouflage plans were designed by another team of artists at the Navy's Camouflage Section in Washington DC (there was another research group, largely made up of scientists, at the Eastman Kodak Laboratories in Rochester NY). The DC team of artists made wooden scale models of merchant ships, applied experimental patterns to them, and tested their effectiveness in an observation theatre. The patterns that worked the best were then drawn up, printed in multiples as color lithographs, and sent out to the various harbors, where they served as a "blueprint" while painting the ships.

One of the artists in the Navy's DC camouflage team (the group that actually designed the camouflage patterns) was a British-born American sculptor named John Gregory. There are photographs of him, seated in a room with other camouflage artists (Everett L. Warner, Frederick Waugh, Gordon Stevenson, and others), painting camouflage patterns on miniature ships.

Ezra Winter is not in these photos of course, because he was attached to Mackay's unit in New York. But he is in other photographs (taken shortly after the war) when, as he worked on commissions (one of which was the interior of the Cunard Building in New York), he was photographed with two of his collaborators—his fellow wartime camoufleurs Barry Faulkner and John Gregory.

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For more on Ezra Winter, see The Ezra Winter Project by Jessica Helfand, who is co-founder of a Connecticut-based design studio called Winterhouse—located in Ezra Winter's former home and studio in Falls Village CT. As of this posting, three Winter-related installments have been issued, the most recent two at here and here.

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

Camouflage Artist | Maurice (Jake) Day

Frank S. Nicholson, National Park Service Poster (c1938)

Above Frank S. Nicholson, wildlife poster for the National Park Service (c1918). Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

It turns out that the artist in the Disney Studios who determined what Bambi would look like was also a World War I ship camoufleur. His name was Maurice (Jake) Day (1892-1983).

There is an online biography of Day, written by Andrew Vietze, titled "The Mainer Who Found Bambi" (DownEast.com, December 2009).

Here's an excerpt that pertains to his service as a camoufleur—

Born in Damariscotta [ME] in 1892, Jake Day attended high school at Lincoln Academy, where he did his first serious painting of a local church. From there he moved on to the Massachusetts Normal School, studying for a year before transferring to the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Upon graduation he found the world embroiled in a war and enlisted in the Naval Camouflage Department of the Emergency Fleet Corps in New Orleans.

As a ship camoufleur in New Orleans, Jake Day presumably worked with Paul F. Brown, whom we featured in a recent earlier post.

The Vietze article provides a substantial account of Day's experiences as an animator in California, where he moved in 1935. One of the firms he worked for was the Walt Disney Studio, which had just purchased the rights to an Austrian children's book about a fawn named Bambi. Disney planned to make an animated film, basing the look of the young deer on a California mule deer. Day convinced Disney to used a white-tailed deer instead—and the rest is history.

Women Camouflage USS Recruit

In an earlier post, we talked about a landlocked navy recruiting station, built in New York in Union Square in 1917. A wooden replica of a ship, it was known as the USS Recruit. As shown in the photographs above, it was initially battleship gray, but in July of 1918, it was repainted overnight in brightly-colored dazzle camouflage by twenty-four members of the Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps. There are historic photographs of the ship being painted (see below), but we have yet to find a photo of the completed camouflage.

Meanwhile, we have run across a news article in the New York Times, titled "CAMOUFLAGE THE RECRUIT: Women's Service Corps Redecorate the Landship in Union Square" (July 12, 1918). Here is the article, which claims that the Recruit's camouflage was designed by American artist William Andrew Mackay. In addition, it includes a list of the women who participated—

The Camouflage Corps of the National League for Woman's Service redecorated the good ship Recruit in Union Square light night and made a neat job of it in spite of the threatening storm clouds and the fact that it was their first painting experience aboard ship. The camouflage idea came from Commander W.T. Conn, who besides getting men for the navy, is also in charge of the famous land ship.

Twenty-four members of the corps, under the command of Captain Myrta Hanford, assisted by a squad of sailors, worked under the direction of Worden Wood, who is now designing rainbows to cover the sides of the vessels of the United States Shipping Board. The dress of the Recruit was designed by William A. Mackay, head camoufleur of the Shipping Board, and it represented a liberal sprinkling of black, white, pink, green and blue, arranged in the most effective manner for avoiding submarines.

The members of the Woman's Camouflage Corps who worked last night were Captain Myra Hanford, Lieutenant Constance Cochrane, and Louise Larned, Sergeants Edith Barry, Sarah Furman, Patrica Gay, Helen Kalkman, Dorothy Murphy, and Gertrude Welling, Corporal Marguerite Becht, and Privates Clara Armstrong, Edith Cohen, Diana Cauffman, Evelyn Curtis, Francis Forbush, Helen Harrison, Helen F. Hobart, Ellen Macmillan, H. Rosalie Manning, Marie H. Moran, Rose Stokes, Eloise P. Valiant, Bertha Wilson, and Mrs. Clara Lathrop Strong.

additional information

Camouflage Artist | Paul F. Brown

USS O'Brien in dazzle camouflage (1918)

In an earlier post today, we mentioned our recent discovery that (during World War I) an artist named Follette Isaacson was the chief camoufleur for the Gulf District, including various seaports in Louisiana and Texas. However, a different artist was assigned to oversee the painting of camouflage patterns on ships in the harbor at New Orleans. That person was an American illustrator named Paul F. Brown (1871-1944). Born in Concord NH, he spent most of his adult life working for Boston-area newspapers, including the Boston Record and the Boston Herald-Traveler. His wartime service is confirmed by an obituary in the New York Times (Saturday, December 9, 1944, p. 15), in which it states that "Mr. Brown during the first World War was in charge of the Navy's camouflage division at New Orleans, where he directed the camouflaging of ships." To our knowledge, Brown and his crew of painters did not apply camouflage to the USS O'Brien (pictured above), but it does show the style of the camouflage plans.

The Venus of Camouflage

WWI-era 42-cm howitzer, called Big Bertha. Creative Commons.

Anon, illustration of deceptive outfits (Syracuse Herald, 1917)

During World War I, the term "Big Bertha" (Dicke Bertha in German) referred to a massive German cannon, supposedly named "in honor" of Bertha Krupp, the heiress and owner of Krupp, the weapons manufacturer. All this coincided with the campaign for Women's Suffrage in the US, and in news stories throughout the war, it was commonly claimed that camouflage had been the invention of women.

Using cosmetics and illusionistic styles of dress, women were said to be hiding their true attributes, for the purpose of snaring rich husbands. There were dozens of news stories about this, one of which was written by Nixola Greeley-Smith (the granddaughter of Horace Greeley) and appeared in the Syracuse Herald, Tuesday, October 30, 1917, p. 10, in (get this) a section called "A Page for Women and the Home." The article's headline and sub-head read as follows: "CAMOUFLAGE MAKES THE BIG BERTHAS THIN AND ALL OUR GIRLS SOON WILL ADOPT IT: Transforming Fat Girls Into Thin Girls and Thin Girls Into Fascinatingly Plump Girls Only a Small Part of the Sartorial Deception That Will Be Practiced Here When the Latest London Fashion Tricks Reach Us—Even Girl With Ingrowing Chin Will Be Able to Hide Her Defects."
This was followed by an account of how the author, as a young woman, had come to realize the necessity of being a willing practitioner of the art of camouflage. She writes—

I shall never forget my own first initiation into the mysteries of camouflage.

An old lady took me in hand when I was fifteen and decided she must help me to be a siren. She told me the time had come for me to dress like a young woman and bought for me a complete camouflage outfit, including a large "rat" which I was supposed to wear in my hair. Never in my life have I experienced the sense of spiritual nausea that came to me then.

"I'll never wear any of those things," I said to her. "They are disgusting."

"You'll never get married unless you do," replied my matrimonial mentor. But even with this dire threat in my ears I would not submit myself to the arts of the camoufleur.…

I suppose if the art of camouflage reaches a high state of perfection, the thin woman will not have to agonize over milk and eggs and other uninteresting foods, and the fat woman can have all the cream and butter and olive oil she likes. Then if the fashions change or she becomes dissatisfied with her dimensions, she need only send for an expert camoufleur and have him paint a few lines on her clothes to become a dazzling Venus of Camouflage.

Camouflage Artist | Follette Isaacson

Bedazzled  /  RISD Camouflage Blog

About a year ago, in a post called WWI Ship Camouflage Teams, we listed ten locations around the country where there were teams of ship camouflage artists, who had the responsibility (during World War I) of applying camouflage patterns to ships. The seaports we cited were Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Tampa, New Orleans and San Francisco. In addition, we embarked on an ongoing project of compiling the names of the artists who served in those districts.

The motivation for this came partly from having seen some of the 450 colored lithographic camouflage plans (the diagrams used by the artists in painting the ships in the harbors) that are housed in the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design. The school was given this rare set of plans in 1919 by artist Maurice L. Freedman (a student at RISD after the war), who had been the chief camoufleur of the district centered in Jacksonville FL. Above is a link to Bedazzled, the RISD dazzle camouflage blog, where some of the plans have been posted online. Also available are high quality full-color prints of the plans, at actual size.

We’ve since learned that there were eleven districts during WWI, not ten. The eleventh was called the Gulf District, and included the Louisiana seaports of Beaumont, Orange and Morgan City, and the Texas cities of Houston and Port Arthur. The chief camoufleur of that district was an artist named Follette Isaacson, whose wartime work was featured in a news article titled “Texans at Ports on Gulf Baffled Enemy Subs by Camouflage: At Port Arthur, Beaumont, Houston and Orange They Made Ships Look Like Something Else,” in the San Antonio Evening News, January 31, 1919, pp. 1-3. The article was based on an interview with Isaacson at the end of the war, when the censorship ban had been lifted.

Camouflage Artist | George W. Weisenburg

Papier mâché dead horse and wagon (c1918). Author's collection.

In an earlier post called Horse Carcass Camouflage, we published two WWI-era photographs, along with a written eyewitness account, of a sniper's observation post in the spurious form of a dead horse—it was actually made of papier mâché. Reproduced here is another image from the same period, showing what appears to be another horse carcass and a wagon, but again the carcass is papier mâché. This is one of a dozen or more news photographs that were apparently sent out by the US government to promote amusing stories about the cleverness of camoufleurs. There is no way to know for sure when and how these techniques originated, or to what extent a trick like this was actually used on the battlefield.

Related to this, we recently found a news article from 1919, which claims that a Chicago artist named George W. Weisenburg (1886-1962) made the first papier mâché horse carcass (we have our doubts). The article, titled "Oak Park Man Created Camouflage, and His Art Horse Causes Health Department Complaint," appeared in Oak Leaves (Oak Park IL), Saturday, July 29, 1919, p. 30. Here's part of the text—

 

One day last year at Camp Grant [Rockford IL] the health inspector of the camp was making his rounds when, lying out in a field, he espied what was apparently a dead horse. Into the office of the commander of the camp stormed the health inspector.

"Your men," said he, "allow dead horses to lie about the place. This is a high crime."

The commander of the camp merely smiled. "That's a camouflage horse," he explained patiently. "It is made of papier mâché and inside its stomach a man can lie concealed." The horse was an example of the work of Sergeant Weisenburg.

Which is merely by way of prelude to the statement that Sergeant George Weisenburg of 1024 Wenonah [Oak Park IL] returned home on Friday of last week after eleven months' service in France as a camouflage artist for the 311th Engineers. Sergeant Weisenburg went to Camp Grant with a trench mortar battery. A few months later he was transferred to the camouflage corps. He was a graduate of the Chicago Art Institute and his ability as an artist was soon discovered. He was given charge of a company of artists who designed screens to camouflage the approach of troops or ammunition transports. The idea of the camouflage horse was his own creation and attracted wide attention.

At the Art Guild in Rockford [IL] he was requested to exhibit a number of canvases that had been hung at the American Art Exhibit. He was promoted to first class sergeant.

After eleven months at Camp Grant he was attached to the 311th Engineers and went overseas with the outfit. After eight months of service in France he was allowed to take a three months' course at the art center at Bellevue, being listed as a special casual. The school was designed by the American Government for those members of the AEF wishing to avail themselves of an advanced course in art. Sergeant Weisenburg returned to America last week, receiving his discharge at Camp Mills [Long Island NY]. He is a son of Dr. and Mrs. Berthold Weisenburg of 1024 Wenonah Avenue [Oak Park].

Beyond that, there isn't much online about Weisenburg, although there is one mention of his having been an art teacher (in later life) at Marshall High School in Oak Park.

Camouflage Artist | Stanley Martineau

Stanley Martineau (detail) in his studio, n.d.

Recently we ran across an Associated Press Wirephoto, dated January 19, 1943, which includes the following caption: NEW YORK, Jan. 18, SOLDIER'S BUST OF FDR UNVEILED. Pvt. Stanley Martineau (left) of the 603rd Engineers, Camouflage Division, is congratulated today on his sculpture of President Roosevelt. The three-ton, 13-foot bust was unveiled at the General Post Office here. Left to right: Pvt. Martineau, Mayor F.H. LaGuardia of New York City, Postmaster Albert Goldman and Basil O'Connor, President of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis.

Stanley Martineau (pictured above working on a portrait of financier J.P. Morgan), from Washington Depot CT, was born in 1915 and died in 1977. Throughout his life, he worked as a commissioned sculptor, completing portrait busts and/or medallions of US Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, financier W.K. Vanderbilt, and various sports heroes, including tennis player Pierre Etchebaster and basketball player Bob Cousy.

Less widely known is his service during World War II as a member of the top secret Ghost Army, a part of the 603rd Engineers, Camouflage Division, officially referred to as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. Other well-known artists-designers in the same unit included Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer (wildlife illustrator) and Art Kane. The existence and operations of this 1100-person unit remained classified until 1996. Details of its mission (including interviews with some of its participants) will be featured later this year (2012), with the release of a new documentary film called The Ghost Army.

Camouflage Artist | Ezra Jack Keats

Ezra Jack Keats (from Keat's Neighborhood)

Like Robert Lawson (who illustrated The Story of Ferdinand in 1936), his acclaimed predecessor in writing and illustrating children's books, award-winning artist and author Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) was also a camouflage artist. Lawson had served in France in the US Army's American Camouflage Corps in World War I, while the younger Keats (known then by his birth name, Jacob Ezra Katz) designed camouflage patterns during World War II in Tallahassee FL for the US Army Air Corps. Before the war, he had worked as a mural painter for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and as a background artist for the Captain Marvel comic strip. At war's end, searching for employment after receiving an honorable discharge, he was so dismayed by the prevalence of anti-Semitism that he changed his legal name to Ezra Jack Keats. He began illustrating children's books in 1954. According to his obituary in the New York Times, in the last three decades of his life, he illustrated 33 books, 22 of which he also wrote.

Camouflage and Baseball

American baseball in France, 1917

Recently we ran across this 1917 press photograph of a baseball game in wartime France. In the background, among the onlookers, are two military officers, and it occurs to us that these are probably American ballplayers, either US Army infantry, or professional ballplayers, brought in by the French army to teach its soldiers how to play.

In support of that, at the end of World War I, a section called "Baseball in France" was published in John B. Foster, ed., Spaulding's Official Baseball Guide (NY: American Sports Publications, 1919), which claims that French military officers were greatly impressed by the "perfect athletic training" of American soldiers, and concluded "that much of the excellence in running, in throwing, in quick action, in rapid achievement and alert judgment, came from years of training in baseball." The French brass "decided to adopt baseball instruction among their recruits," with the result that Johnny Evers (a star second baseman for the Boston Braves until 1917, and then with the Philadelphia Phillies) was brought over to Paris to teach the game to French recruits. After only ten days of instruction, the benefits were already evident and the generals were persuaded that "skill in throwing hand grenades would be much increased by regular training in baseball."

Coincident with this was the baseball contribution made by the artists who were attached to the American Camouflage Corps. It was their wartime duty, according to this source, "to disguise everything pertaining to rolling stock, airplanes, automobiles, and even themselves, under the cover of mystic cubic designs of all colors," and when they turned to baseball, they showed up "in baseball suits camouflaged like the uniforms of camouflaged troops. The result has been disastrous for both catchers and batsmen, to say nothing of fielders and basemen; and the matches between these men have created an immense amount of amusement and curiosity."

Gestalt Theory, Cubism and Camouflage

On Max Wertheimer and Pablo Picasso: Gestalt Theory, Cubism and Camouflage

Art / Science Camouflage Podcast

Hooded Cutttlefish (photo by Silke Baron). Creative Commons.

EARLIER THIS WEEK, Woods Hole marine biologist Roger Hanlon and video artist Basia Goszcynska were interviewed by Mindy Todd on a 30-minute live radio program called The Point. Hanlon, who was featured on NOVA several years ago in Kings of Camouflage (available now as dvd), is well known for his research of camouflage in cuttlefish. The subject of this podcast is the collaborative work of artists and scientists in studies of camouflage and communication, with allusions to further ideas about architecture, landscape design, advertising and other research possibilities.

Camouflage Research Bibliography

Camouflage Research Bibliography

Camouflage from Silhouettes

© Roy R. Behrens 2012

From Everett L. Warner, "Marine Camouflage" in The Bush Magazine of Factory and Shipping Economy. January 15, 1918, pp. 12-14. Reprinted in Roy R. Behrens, ed., SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook (2012), with diagrams redrawn—

IF YOU WILL cut out of black paper the silhouette of a steamer as in Figure 1, you will see that on a dark boat painted in one solid color the contour is perfectly visible. Cut exactly the same silhouette out of a column of fine print and you have something equivalent to low visibility camouflage (see Figure 2). It is less visible than the first, but the outline of the steamer can still be discerned. Figure 3, where the pattern of a steamer has been cut out of larger type, illustrates the dazzle system in camouflage, and you will note that the contour of the vessel is now exceedingly difficult to determine.

Camouflage on YouTube

Roy R. Behrens on camouflage

Mass Production Camouflage

WWI artillery vehicle, with factory camouflage applied

From Frank Parker Stockbridge, Yankee Ingenuity in the War. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920—

[During World War I] Yankee ingenuity found application in the devising of methods of putting on the camouflage with the utmost speed and efficiency. In the gun carriage plant of the American Car and Foundry Company, for instance, I watched the girls in khaki overalls spraying camouflage on the finished caissons and wheels one afternoon. The paints of different colors, in huge tanks, were deposited by means of a gigantic reproduction of the air brush, used by artists everywhere.
The main office of the American Car and Foundry Company was located at 165 Broadway in New York. Beginning in June 1917, the company's Detroit production facility was contracted by the US Government to produce 10,970 artillery vehicles at a rate of one hundred per day. A peculiar innovation of these is that a brightly-colored disruptive camouflage pattern (see photo above) was airbrushed onto these vehicles as part of their manufacture. It's also interesting that the exact same camouflage pattern was applied to each of them.

The three photos below (along with a number of others) were published in 1919 in a book titled The American Car and Foundry Company in Khaki: Its Production Achievements in the Great War, which was produced and distributed by the company. Shown below are views of the camouflage being applied by women workers in the factory's paint shop (as described above by Stockbridge), the outdoor storage of thousands of these (awaiting shipping instructions), and a crated vehicle ready to ship.

Cagoules | WWI Camouflaged Robes

From Roy R. Behrens, CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (Bobolink Books, 2009), p. 79—

Cagoules were paint-splattered hooded cloaks devised by the first French camoufleurs, to prevent themselves from being seen by aerial observers as they manned long-range artillery. A wonderful painting of this [shown above] was published on the cover of Scientific American on September 29, 1917. Some of these cloaks still exist, including prototypes designed by French camoufleur Eugene Corbin, and reproduced in Blechman• (2004:126-127) and Newark•• (2007:83). They are also described in Kahn••• (1984:148), who states the following: "Hidden beneath camouflaged cagoules, hooded uniforms…was a ghoulish image of the modern soldier, whose finely fitted and brilliant red and blue clothing was replaced by an amorphous costume of drab greens and browns that turned the individual into a frightening form."
A photograph of a group of hooded artillerymen was also published in the Popular Science Monthly, Vol 93 No 3, September 1918, p. 335, as shown below. The headline reads "Not Monks, But Camouflaged Artillerymen."

Amazingly, full-color French photographs of comparable outfits have also survived (see adjusted example below), and can be found online by searching "camouflage" at the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

•Hardy Blechman, ed. (2004), DPM: An Encyclopedia of Camouflage. London: DPM. ••Tim Newark (2007), Camouflage. London: Thames and Hudson. •••Elizabeth Louise Kahn (1984), The Neglected Majority: "Les Camoufleurs," Art History, and World War I. Lanham MD: University Press of America.

Arthur Lismer | WWI Ship Camouflage

Arthur Lismer (1885-1969), a British-born Canadian painter and a member of the Group of Seven, was not a camouflage artist. Beginning in 1918, he served instead as an Official War Artist and was assigned to document naval activities at the Halifax Harbor for the Canadian War Records. Among the subjects he portrayed were dazzle-painted ships, the best known example of which is the painting reproduced above, The Olympic with Returned Soldiers (1919). The original artwork is in the collection of the Canadian War Museum.

Camouflaged Cannon Duplicate

purchase online

Here's an oddity: In an earlier post, we reproduced a painting (the top image above) by an artist named S. Ugo, of British soldiers applying a dazzling camouflage scheme to field artillery. It was reproduced initially in The Sphere (August 3, 1918:86-87). But more recently, we ran across a second reproduction (the bottom image above) of what at first appears to be the very same painting. This one appeared in color in Samuel John Duncan-Clark, History's Greatest War: A Pictorial Narrative. Geographical Publishing Company, 1919, pp. 50-51. As becomes clear when the two are viewed together, there are some curious differences. The bottom one is a flopped version in which the artillery faces left. In addition, four airplanes and a dirigible have been added to the sky. Notice that it's also cropped—and the artist's signature has disappeared.