Alon Bement | Georgia O'Keeffe's Teacher

Camouflage Article by Alon Bement in Washington Times, June 15, 1919

Alon Bement was born in Ashfield MA on August 15, 1876, and died in 1954. He studied in Paris with Leon Bonnat and Jean-Joseph Benjamin-Constant, then went on to teach drawing, painting and design at Columbia University, the Maryland Institute of the Arts, and the University of Virginia. His interest was not just in the practice of art, but in art theory and education as well. In 1921, he wrote an influential book titled Figure Construction, editions of which are still available.

He was especially interested in the design theories of Arthur Wesley Dow, whose book on Composition (1899) was widely used in art schools in the early 20th century. Bement is mostly remembered today as a pivotal influence on Georgia O’Keeffe. She met him in 1912, took courses from him at Columbia University (where Dow was Art Department Head), and was even his teaching assistant. It was Bement who introduced her to Dow’s Japanese-influenced approach to design, which O’Keeffe made use of in her work. As documented by Robinson (1989), “the encounter with Bement, and with Dow’s theories, altered Georgia’s life.”

It is less commonly known that Bement was an active participant in ship camouflage during World War I. He served as a camoufleur for the US Shipping Board, and was probably part of a New York-based camouflage team that was headed by William Andrew Mackay. In addition, in 1917-1919, he published four substantial articles on the artistic underpinnings of camouflage. His involvement in the subject is noted in the biographical entry in Behrens (2009). There is a file of newspaper clippings and other ephemera about him in the Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Writings by Bement include—
Bement, Alon (1921). Figure Construction: a brief treatise on drawing the human figure for art students, the costume designer, and teachers. NY: Gregg Publishing Company.
___(1917). “Camouflage,” in Teachers College Record 18 No 5, pp. 458-462.
___(1919a). “The Report of the U-16,” in St Nicholas XLVI (November 1918-April 1919), pp. 495-498.
___(1919b). “Tricks by Which You Can Camouflage,” in American Magazine 87 (May), pp. 44-46.
 ___(1919c), “’Camouflage’ for Fat Figures and Faulty Faces,” in Washington Times. American Weekly Section, June 15.

Other sources—
Roy R. Behrens (2009). Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books.
Roxana Robinson (1989). Georgia O’Keeffe: A Life. Lebanon NH: University Press of New England.

Ship Camoufleur Alon Bement—Again

Alon Bement, artist, teacher and camoufleur

We've featured American artist and teacher Alon Bement (shown above) at least three times in earlier blog posts. As happens with all of us, he would be all but forgotten today were it not for the fact of his influence on the painter Georgia O'Keeffe. During World War I, he also served as a civilian ship camoufleur, an experience he wrote about in newspapers and magazines. From 1920 to 1925, he was the director of the Maryland Institute College of Art (known then as the Maryland Institute School of Fine and Practical Arts). According to that school’s website, as its director—

[Alon Bement] brought a modernist sensibility to the school, introduced extension courses for high school students, and sent art education instructors to remote parts of Maryland. He made the public exhibitions hosted on campus an institutional priority including one of the first public shows of work by Henri Matisse in the United States.

In the 1930s, he became associated with the William E. Harmon Foundation and served as Director of the National Alliance of Art and Industry, during which he played a role in the production of two educational films, The Negro and Art (1933) and We Are All Artists (1936), both of which are now online.

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SS Aurora in a dazzle camouflage pattern (1918)

Anon, “Navy Camoufleur at Manual” in Brooklyn Daily Eagle (Brooklyn NY), May 6, 1919, p. 14—

Alon Bement, a camoufleur, first class, of the United States Shipping Board, and formerly a teacher at the Teachers’ College, Columbia University, was the speaker at the Senior Assembly of the Manual Training High School yesterday. At the beginning of the war Mr. Bement, who had considerable reputation as an artist, was called to act as a naval camoufleur. He was sent to Washington DC where he worked out designs for camouflaging ships, using small models for the purpose. If the designs were found to be feasible, they were reproduced on a linen sheet, taken to a shipyard and painted on a ship.

Mr. Bement went into detail to show how portions of the ship were marked out for certain colors by means of a hand mirror when the sun was shining. The camoufleur would stand on the edge of the dry dock and reflect the light along the lines which were intended to mark the borders of the various colors. In this way the apportioning off of the ship was readily accomplished.

Mr. Bement told of other schemes which were attempted to combat the submarine menace such as the construction of an outer hull to prematurely explode the torpedo. This means was hastily abandoned because such a hull would slow down the ship to such an extent that it would fall an easy prey to the U-boats.

He also explained why only the transports, freighters and destroyers were camouflaged and not the battleships. The big fighters were not daily subject to submarine attack so that it was unnecessary to give them their “make-up” and since it costs $3,000 to paint a battleship attention was confined to the first mentioned ships.

Mr. Bement told of how in a captured German U-boat, the British found fifty-eight pages of a leaflet in the commander’s cabin, telling what methods the Prussians were taking to combat the camouflage of Allied ships. With this find, the Allied camoufleurs were able to take new steps to offset the year’s calculations of the Germans.

One of the most interesting parts of this news article is the description of the use of a hand mirror to convey to the painter—whose task it was to mark out on the actual ship the camouflage color divisions with chalk—the location of "dots" from a distance (a process that's all but identical to the use of a pouncing wheel in transferring a pattern from one surface to another). About a year ago, we posted another news account of the same technique.
 

Alon Bement, O'Keeffe and Camouflage

In earlier postings, we've talked about American artist and teacher Alon Bement, shown here in an early photograph. A follower of Arthur Wesley Dow (author of Composition), Bement was an important influence on the young Georgia O'Keeffe (see photo lower on this page), who studied with him at Columbia University.

During World War I, he was a civilian camoufleur for the US Shipping Board, in the course of which he worked with William Andrew Mackay in New York. He wrote at least four magazine and news articles on ship camouflage, in which he also talked about how camouflage could be of use in everyday life. One of those, titled "Tricks by Which You Can Fool the Eye" (in American Magazine (May 1919), pp. 44-46 and 132ff), begins with the following statement—

When you think of camouflage, you imagine it is something that belongs only to war. You probably have no idea that you can literally "use it in your business," that you can employ it in your houses, your yards and gardens, even in the clothes you wear.

He goes on to talk about how camouflage could be used to enhance the look of "a certain kind of dwelling which is as ugly as it is common." He illustrates this with "before and after" drawings (shown below) of a house whose appearance could be greatly improved merely by making some changes "in the eaves, the windows, and the door, the porch, and the placing of shrubbery."


























It is a quaint article, mostly made up of advice on how to compensate for ones physical imperfections, by using clothes and cosmetics to conceal what might otherwise be too apparent.

The article mentions the work of artist and naturalist Abbott H. Thayer, and, at the very end, Bement also talks briefly about his own wartime work with camouflage—

To keep him [the German U-boat commander] from learning our tricks we varied the [ship camouflage] diagrams, put in "jokers," discarded old ones and invented new ones continually. We kept him guessing. And while he was guessing, our ships were eluding him.

In the New York studio where this work was carried on under the direction of Mr. William Mackay there was an elaborate system of testing the designs. We had a periscope, small models of vessels, and various painted sea and sky backgrounds. Some captains of merchant vessels were skeptical about the value of camouflage and declared they wouldn't use it on their ships. But when they once saw, by means of these little models, how we could fool them, old sea dogs that they were, they became enthusiastic converts.

American painter Georgia O'Keeffe

Postscript (February 14, 2014): Since first posting this page in May 2012, we have located a news article from the Milwaukee Sentinel (April 18, 1943) titled MODERN MAGIC TO MYSTIFY OUR ENEMIES. It includes four photographs of civilian camouflage students at the Traphagen School of Fashion in New York. One of the photographs is of a classroom setting in which nine students (seven women and two men) are listening to a lecture by their instructor, Alon Bement, described as "a veteran camoufleur of World War I." Bement is standing in front of a chalkboard, on which has been written the famous passage from Shakespeare's Macbeth in which the soldiers are camouflaged by foliage from trees in Birnam Wood. He is holding a dazzle-painted ship model. The caption reads—

These hard-working students of the art of camouflage are learning how to make things seem what they're not under the instruction of expert Alon Bement, one of the World War l's ablest camoufleurs.

Roy R. Behrens, O'Keeffe Homage. Digital montage (2011).

Ship Camouflage and Nature Talk / Hartman Reserve

Above Title slide for a richly illustrated talk that will take place this weekend at the Hartman Reserve Nature Center in Cedar Falls IA. The 50-minute talk begins at 2:00 pm, Sunday, February 10, 2019* and is free and open to the public at the center's Interpretive Building. It focuses on the connection between turn-of-the-century studies of animal camouflage (called protective coloration then) and the development of military camouflage by artists during World War I.

*PLEASE NOTE This event has been postponed because of winter weather. It has been rescheduled for 2:00 pm, Sunday, April 14, 2019. Perfect timing in view of its Easter-themed title.

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NEWS OF THE SCHOOLS: Navy Camoufleur at Manual. Brooklyn Daily Eagle. May 6, 1919, p. 14—

Alon Bement, a camoufleur, first class, of the United States Shipping Board, and formerly a teacher at the Teachers’ College, Columbia University, was the speaker at the Senior Assembly of the Manual Training High School yesterday. At the beginning of the war Mr. Bement, who had considerable reputation as an artist, was called to act as a naval camoufleur. He was sent to Washington where he worked out designs for camouflaging ships, using small models for the purpose. If the designers were found to be feasible, they were reproduced on a linen sheet, taken to a shipyard and painted on a ship.

Mr. Bement went into detail to show how portions of the ship were marked out for certain colors by means of a hand mirror when the sun was shining. The camoufleur would stand on the edge of the drydock and reflect the light along the lines which were intended to mark the borders of the various colors. In this way the apportioning off of the ship was readily accomplished.

Mr. Bement told of other schemes which were attempted to combat the submarine menace such as the construction of an outer hull to prematurely explode the torpedo. This means was hastily abandoned because such a hull would slow down the ship to such an extent that it would fall an easy prey to the U-boats.

He also explained why only the transports, freighters and destroyers wore camouflage and not battleships. The big fighters were not daily subject to submarine attack so that it was unnecessary to give them their “make-up” and since it costs $3,000 to paint a battleship, attention was confined to the first mentioned ships.

Mr. Bement told of how in a captured German U-boat, the British found fifty-eight pages of a leaflet in the commander’s cabin, telling what methods the Prussians were taking to combat the camouflage of Allied ships. With this find, the Allied camoufleurs were able to take new steps to offset the year’s calculations of the Germans.

Georgia O'Keeffe / Her Teacher Was a Camoufleur

Ship Camoufleur Alon Bement

Above We have posted at various times about American artist Alon Bement (1876-1954). He taught art education at Columbia University, where, according to the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, he had an important influence on her when she was his student. 

During World War I, Bement was a civilian camoufleur for the US Shipping Board, in the course of which he worked with William Andrew Mackay in New York. He wrote at least four magazine and news articles on ship camouflage, in which he also talked about how camouflage could be useful in everyday life (in painting ones house, for example, or in choosing fashionable clothing to wear). 

Only recently have we found yet another article—not written by him—in which he was interviewed about people’s hands, in which he asserted that hands “reveal ones personality as clearly as does the face.” 

The article was published in The New York Sun, September 21, 1919, p. 10. It includes a portrait photograph (shown above) of Bement. At first glance, it appears that he might be holding a model of a camouflaged ship, but a closer look reveals that he is instead holding an artist’s palette.

•••

From LETTERS FROM READERS OF THE NEWS in Des Moines News (Des Moines IA), September, page 4—

CAMOUFLAGE AGAIN—Now, patrons, this camouflaging isn't such a new. It's been cavorting around these quarters for some time, but it's never been labeled. The butcher puts his wrists on the scale with the round steak, and the camouflaged wrists toll up also as round steak.

The grocer camouflages the berries to look like a healthy boxful by putting the big boys on top and it looks like a quart box but it’s been camouflaged; the bottom has been given a lift. The summer time is harvest time for camouflage salve among the vacation Wilburs and Tessies—y'know, around the beaches, etc.

A Wilbur hung up in noisy togs camouflages himself to some Tessie as a regular devil millionaire’s son, and she vise worser, and, when the twin weeks are went neither one lets loose on the camouflage. He hikes back to reading gas meters and she hikes back to the glove stall.

•••

RELATED LINKS

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

 

William Andrew Mackay

Alon Bement's 1925 article on illusions & camouflage

This five-page article on ship camouflage has now been posted online and can be downloaded as a pdf. Its author, American artist Alon Bement, was an important teacher of Georgia O'Keeffe at Columbia University, who served as a civilian camoufleur during World War I. We have blogged about him in the past. Here is the link.

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

nautical costuming / the effect is weird and startling

Above Page with ship camouflage diagrams by Alon Bement in "Principles Underlying Ship Camouflage in International Marine Engineering (February 1919). It may be of interest that Bement was an influential teacher of Georgia O'Keeffe at Columbia University.

•••

William Charles O’Donnell, Jr., "Over the Bounding Main in War Time" in Educational Foundations. Vol 30 No 3, December-January 1918-19, pp. 133-132—

…With the nations of the world at war, the ocean highway is beset with peculiar dangers and life on the ocean wave is a succession of novel experiences.

I am thinking now of the incidents of the trans-Atlantic trip to Europe in the month of December, 1917, and of the return voyage in the month of May, 1918. [Throughout that ocean crossing] …I tried to appreciate the subtle artistry displayed in the splashings of color and contortions of design on the sides of our steamer and on the other vessels similarly decorated. Camouflage, I believe, is a French theatrical expression. When an actor puts on his wig, elongates his nose, paints his cheeks, and accentuates his eye-brows for the purpose of blending his individuality with that of the character he is to represent before the footlights, he is the original camouflager, if the word may be so anglicised. So the great ships are made up for their part in the world's mighty drama of war. The effect is often weird, and startling. This nautical costuming seems often to reflect more of the spirit of comedy than of heavy tragedy. One does not have to wait until he is on the rolling waves to get the sensation for which ocean travel is famous. Concentration for a minute or two on the attempt to discover the elements of art in these grostesque displays, the geometric values in those wild configurations is enough to produce the brain whirl and the other disturbances supposed to be symptomatic of ocean sickness. The only cue is to close the eyes, to disengage the mind from the occupation, and to wait for the earth's returning to its orbit. Yet, we are assured that there is a discoverable scientific principle upon which the whole process is established. I have read somewhere of the French artist whose observation of the birds in their flight led him to a careful study of color combinations that produced the effect of invisibility. At short distance the black-backed bird with white breast, for instance, quickly becomes but a thin black line against the background of the sky. At a little distance the black line itself becomes invisible. A similar effect can be obtained with a ship at sea if a similar continguity of variation in the colorings of its exterior decorations is effected. Especially as these ships are tumbling amid the waves at sea it is difficult to judge of their size or to know whether they are coming or going. By frequently veering its course the camouflaged ship is a puzzle to the submarine. Especially is this true of the small vessels, such as the torpedo boat destroyers, which have done such valiant work as convoys for transports and ocean steamers. I have watched these little heroes of the deep cutting into the foaming billows when it seemed as though they were entirely submerged and would never appear on the surface again. I have seen them when it was difficult to believe that they were more than half their real size. I remember watching one of our convoys one morning when it was utterly impossible to see the center of the boat at all. Just a small portion of the bow and about an equal portion of the stern was all that could be discerned. At times it seemed as though I must be looking at bits of wreckage being thrown from wave to wave. So fantastic as these decorations seem to be they are the application of an old science newly developed which has contributed largely to the success of the Allies.

The most astounding fact in all the naval history of the world is the transportation of America's mighty army across the submarine infested Atlantic to the surprise and discomforture of the enemy and to the saving of the imperiled forces that champion democracy on the battlefields of Europe.

The word camouflage, its original meaning unknown or forgotten. has already passed into the vocabulary of English speaking peoples and will find a place in the next editions of complete dictionaries like Websters and the Standard. So from the blazing pit of the war this word has come into our language to be used henceforth to indicate all forms of make-believe and deception. It is a word that has been and will be misapplied and abused but it will ever be doubly significant to the man who crossed the seas at the time of the crisis…

RELATED LINKS    

 Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 Optical science meets visual art

 Disruption versus dazzle

 Chicanery and conspicuousness

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

Stinemetz Knew Stieglitz | WWI Ship Camouflage

Alfred Stieglitz, Hands of Helen Freeman (c1920)

Everyland, an American monthly periodical published by Christian missionaries, was self-described as "a magazine of world friendship for boys and girls." Among its various activities, it sponsored drawing contests. In its June 1920 issue (Vol 11 No 6), it included the following paragraph—

Morgan Stinemetz…is our Art Editor. During the war, he was in the camouflage service of the navy. It is he who will judge the results of the drawing contests, so look out for him!

So who was Morgan Stinemetz? In addition to that page in Everyland, I've found two other sources. One is a multi-page article by Louise Davis, titled ARTIST'S RETREAT: Morgan Stinemetz, who dropped an illustrator's career to become Methodist Publishing House art editor, is a man who finds joy in country life. Published in The Nashville Tennessean Magazine on September 7, 1952 (pp. 6-7, 18-19), it was illustrated by eight photographs of the artist and his artwork, interwoven with interview excerpts. I also found a newspaper obituary that was featured in the Nashville Tennessean on August 20, 1969 (p. 23). He had died at a nursing home in Nashville two days earlier.

Stinemetz was born in Washington DC in 1886. His grandfather, Major Thomas P. Morgan, was one of the first DC police commissioners. His father-in-law was an important DC publisher. As a child, Stinemetz had been interested in animals, as well as in painting and drawing. He studied at the Corcoran School of Art in DC, the National Academy of Design in New York, and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts in Philadelphia with Thomas P. Anshutz, a student and later a colleague of Thomas Eakins.

From Philadelphia, Stinemetz returned to New York, where (these are Louise Davis' words) "cubism and other various other 'isms' that startled the new century were taking a firm hold. He experimented with all of them and had his paintings in numerous shows, including the first International Art Show at the Armory in New York in 1913, when Matisse and Picasso were first shown in this country."

He became interested in the literary excursions of Gertrude Stein, and developed a friendship with Alfred Stieglitz, photographer, gallery owner, and the publisher of Camera Work. In 1916, Stieglitz met the painter Georgia O'Keeffe, and soon after they became a pair. It is interesting to note that in the years just prior to this, O'Keeffe had studied with an art educator (and an advocate of the theories of Arthur Wesley Dow) named Alon Bement, who had been her greatest influence. During World War I, Bement was a major contributor to American ship camouflage.

As for Stinemetz, he soon became disillusioned with Modernism. Quoting Davis, he became "fed up with the artificiality of the whole movement." At gallery openings, when he mingled with those in attendance, "he overheard them 'interpreting' things into his work that he had never thought of. …They analyzed every brush stroke, he said, and he was sick of it. He gave up painting on the spot," and turned instead to a new career as a book and magazine illustrator. In subsequent years, he became a well-known illustrator for a variety of popular magazines, among them Collier's, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Outdoor Life, and others. He especially enjoyed animal illustrations, and eventually became well-known for his drawings and prints of Scottie dogs. Over the years, he moved from the East Coast to Cincinnati, then settled in Nashville TN as the art director for the Methodist Publishing House.

The US entered WWI in 1917, and soon after artists, designers and architects were encouraged to use their expertise in the development of wartime camouflage. Stinemetz was one of those who contributed to naval camouflage. The article by Davis states that "he served in the navy, capitalizing on the tricks of cubism to camouflage our ships so that enemy submarines would miscalculate their aim."  The obituary simply notes that "he designed camouflage for ships of the US Navy." But he may have remained a civilian, since the Navy and the US Shipping Board worked with both military and civilian artists in designing, testing and painting "dazzle" camouflage patterns on ships, both military and commercial (called merchant ships).

Until these references were found, I had never heard of Morgan Stinemetz, much less about his service as a ship camoufleur, so it may be wise to be skeptical of the claim (stated first in the Davis article, then repeated verbatim in the obituary) that "so effective were his distortions of perspective that a record of his camouflage patterns was filed in various museums." Obviously, if such documents still exist, it would surely be helpful to find them.

Postscript (added May 10, 2019): I was mistaken. I had heard of Morgan Stinemetz. A couple of years ago, I gained access to a list (dated September 26, 1918) of sixty-four artists who had studied ship camouflage in New York with William Andrew Mackay. Stinemetz's name is on that list of American Shipping Board camoufleurs from the Second District. This suggests that Stinemetz was a civilian, and most likely not in the Navy.

WWI Ship Camouflage Artist | Arthur Turnbull Hill

USS West Zula (1918)

In 1918, The East Hampton Star (East Hampton, Long Island NY) announced its plan to publish a list of residents who were serving in World War I. Among those who replied was an artist named Arthur Trumbull Hill (1868-1929), who had already been employed as a civilian “camofleur” [sic] for several months. He welcomed the opportunity, he said—

to give you some idea—no detailed description is allowable—of the unique and important work the Navy and Shipping Board have done in Marine Camouflage since the United States entered the war.

This was published as a Letter to the Editor on the front page on October 18, 1918. He went on to say—

Everyone, of course, has by this time, seen some of the camouflage ships, but few know that these remarkable, and frequently very handsome, cubistic looking productions in line and color, are the result of a carefully defined system adopted by our navy and only after the most exhaustive tests, and that the designs, far from being a hit or miss proposition, are most carefully worked out and elaborated [in] almost infinite variety under the immediate direction of artists employed solely for this purpose by the Federal Government. In fact, the personnel of the Navy and Marine Camouflage Departments include some of the most talented artists in America.

In signing his letter, Hill listed his affiliation as USSB, EFC—for US Shipping Board, Emergency Fleet Corporation. In other words, he was working for the civilian branch of wartime camouflage, which itself was overseen by the US Navy. In December 1918, four of his paintings were included in an exhibition in New York of war-related art, titled the Allied War Salon. His exhibited works were titled “Camouflage at Robins Dry Dock,” “Camouflaged Ships at Erie Basin,” “Camouflage on the Mystic River,” and “Leaving for Providence.”

These works and those of fourteen others were included in a section in which the artists were described as “Marine Camoufleurs of the US Shipping Board, Second District.” This is the same district (based in New York) for which William Andrew Mackay was the Chief Civilian Camoufleur. The other camoufleurs were Spencer B. Nichols, Hobart Nichols, Alonzo Kimball, Alfred Huty, George E. Harris, Hubert R. Chapin, Henry Davenport, Harry Farlow, Thomas D. Benrimo, Ralph T. Willis, Carol M. Sax, M. McGregor Jamieson, Alon Bement, and George Wright.

Arthur Trumbull Hill died in Brooklyn NY in 1929. Five years later, there was a memorial exhibition of his artwork at the South Gallery, Guild Hall in East Hampton. The majority of the exhibited works were from his wife’s collection. She also wrote the catalog introduction, which included the following statement—

In this collection, as a matter now of historical interest are several pictures of camouflaged ships which my husband painted when he served as a camoufleur in the marine camouflage in the World War.

USS Major Wheeler (1918)

USS Major Wheeler (1918) second view

•••

Sources

A.E. Gallatin, Allied War Salon. Exhibition catalog. New York: American Art Galleries, 1918.

Arthur Turnbull Hill, in National Cyclopedia of American Biography.

Hill, Arthur T. A.T. HILL, CAMOFLEUR. Letter to the Editor. The East Hampton Star (East Hampton NY). October 18, 1918, p. 1.

Local News: MEMORIAL SHOWING OF WORK OF A.T. HILL AT GUILD HALL. The East Hampton Star (East Hampton NY). July 19, 1934, p. 5.

Note The ship photographs on this post are intended merely as examples of WWI dazzle ship camouflage. They may not have any connection with Arthur T. Hill.

ambiguous perspective disguises ship's course in wwi

Above is a wonderful page spread from the February 1919 issue of International Marine Engineering. The article, titled "Principles Underlying Ship Camouflage: Complementary Colors Produce Low Visibility—Dazzle System of Ambiguous Perspective Disguises Ship's Course—Special Color Effects," was written and illustrated by Alon Bement, whom we've blogged about before. He taught art education at Columbia University, was a wartime camouflage advisor, and, interestingly, had a pivotal influence on his student, the painter Georgia O'Keeffe (as claimed by her). His ship camouflage diagrams are exceptionally helpful (there are more in the full article), as is the text. I think it would be fair to say that this is one of the best WWI-era articles on marine camouflage. I have reprinted the article, in its entirety (text and images), in my anthology of ship camouflage documents, titled SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook.

Lady Camoufleurs Make Camouflage on NY Streets

On this page are two World War I government photographs, showing the contributions of the Camouflage Reserve Corps of the National League for Women's Service. In the photo above they are applying a disruptive camouflage scheme to a War Savings Stamp booth at Broadway and 43rd Street in New York. August 1918. NARA 165-WW-599G-041. At the bottom of this page, they are painting a War Savings Stamp theatre in Times Square, New York, in the same month. NARA 165-WW-599G-016. It had been decided that painting disruptive camouflage schemes on buildings and vehicles was an effective means of attracting a crowd for fundraising and recruiting events. 

 

The first event was described in considerable detail in a news article, reproduced in full below.

 

•••

 

Anon, LADY CAMOUFLEURS WORK IN TIMES SQ.: But Their Overalls Give Nary a Thrill to That Blasé Region; PROTECT WSS STAND: Twelve of 'Em Climb Ladders and Paint Right Into the Dusk in the New York Sun, August 21, 1918, p. 2—

Twelve lady artists from Greenwich Village, who are serving their country as captains, lieutenants, sergeants, corporals and privates of the Camouflage Reserve Corps of the National League for Women’s Service [NLWS], passed yesterday afternoon painting a futuristic, or cubistic, mince pie nightmare on the little Thrft Stamp stand in Times Square, so that if a German submarine sails up Broadway or one of Fritz’s Zeppelins comes along dropping bombs on the revellers of the Great White Way the camouflaged stand will just melt away into the surrounding landscape of subway holes and theatrical billboards and the Thrift Stamp cashbox won’t be disturbed.

The twelve ladies were assisted by two Beaux Arts men, members of the shipping board, A[lon] Bement of Columbia University and Artist [Henry] Davenport, who came over from Boston to help boss the job.

Worked to Beat the Moon

The fourteen toiled manfully to finish the chef d’oeuvre before nightfall, because as Captain Myra Hanford of the Camouflage Corps [CC] remarked in a pause of her task of holding the chalk with which the design was marked, the moon was at the full and moonlight nights were just the time the Huns took to make their raid. And with Eddie Cantor of the Follies and Frances Victory of the “Eyes of Youth” and a lot of other talent coming to open the drive for $25,000,000 the CC of the NLWS would never forgive itself if it left that stand unprotected, a target for the Huns.

They toiled manfully, as before stated; lithely the overalled limbs of the ladies skipped up and down the ladders; merrily the paint brushes flirted with the rough boards of the stand. And just as the excitement was at its height along came a painter, just the common garden variety of painter, with a red nose and a pipe and a pail of beer in his hand, and cocked an eye at his lady competitors and spake thus to his mate, an electrician with a coil of wire over his grimy shoulder:

“Them wimmin don’t know how to handle a brush. They pecks at the boards like a canary bird. You wanna hold the brush wit’ a free sort of grasp and make broad strokes.”

“They’re probably workin’ by the piece,” mused the electrician. “Say, ain’t war what Sherman said it was? Wimmin has to put on overalls and climb ladders in Times Square to make the world safe for democracy. Pretty tough.”

On the whole, though, Times Square didn’t pay much attention to the busy band of lady painters. So blase has a suffrage campaign and a year of war students made the Great White Way that a woman in overalls, who would have been mobbed ten years ago, was worth scarcely a passing glance.

A few men stopped and gazed with expressions which said: Good Lord! what is this world coming to? or, If my wife ever does such a thing she’ll hear from me; or, Bully for the nervy dames; or, What’s it all about, anyway, according to their natures; and a few women examined their emancipated sisters with eyes that expressed amusement, admiration, disdain or inanity, all according to their natures; but that was all.

The WSS press agent who prophesied that the police reserves would have to be called out to handle the crowds was sadly disappointed. The crowd at no time was more than one hundred, even counting the two stray dogs that hung around tasting the paint brushes.

The stand is a dinky little affair which some of those zephyrs that whiz around Times Square will probably lift right off of its legs some day, but there’s one thing about it, it represents subway folk without paying for it. For half a dozen husky workmen from the subway excavations around there put it up, in Mr. [Theodore] Shonts’s time, too, and what is more they brought some of Mr. Shonts’s lumber to do it with.

The lumber was covered with posters and bills and things—no, there wasn’t any of Mr. Shonts’s poetry on it—but three nice young soldiers and a sailor and a fat WSS press agent worked hours scraping those posters off. One of Marjorie Rambeau’s eyes and several of the nether limbs of the Dolly Sisters still remained when, early in the afternoon, the twelve members of the Camouflage Corps, in natty khaki suits and caps, arrived with their paint pots and brushes.

There was still time for a lot of scraping, for the CC had to dress. Camouflaged by a rickety screen they performed this operation in a corner of the stand, with the populace gazing hungrily at the screen and waiting for what might come forth.

McMillan, Hand Me a Brush

Various visions came forth and crawled down the ladder. As a matter of fact, not all wore overalls. Private [Helen] Harrison was extremely efficient in a real pair, the kind with straps going over the shoulders and pockets for tools, neat fitting to the legs; but Corporal [Ellen] McMillan, who is youthful and curly haired, was brazenly feminine in a pale blue smock with pink embroidery. But her knickers were sufficiently mannish. Lieut. [Louise] Larned, who was the first to mount the ladder and paint, stuck to her brief khaki skirt. One or two wore artists’ smocks of gray, and one donned a kitchen apron.

Still there was a general effect of overalled feminine limbs clambering up and down. Also the camouflagers called each other by their last names without any handles—“Harrison, are you doing the blue or shall I?” “McMillan, hand me a brush”—and so forth. It had a businesslike sound.

The shades of night had fallen when the stand finally bloomed forth in its startling dress of blue and yellow and white and black, done in highly futuristic patches according to the design drawn by the Shipping Board representatives. And the twelve camouflagers took off their overalls and aprons and picked up their paint pails and marched off to their well earned dinners, musing proudly on the part their work will have in the salesmen’s drive which opens tomorrow, when every membersof the national salesmen’s organization now in New York will start in on a week’s voluntary service service for Uncle Sam and the War Savings Stamps.

Captain. Charles H. McKinney of the Twenty-sixth police precinct is extremely pround of the camouflaged stand. He, it will be remembered, is the knight of the Women Police Reserves, and a champion of the cause of women. He said it was a source of gratification to him that his district, which produced the first women police reserves, also had the distinction of possessing one of the first works of art of the lady camouflagers done in Uncle Sam’s name.

 

Ship Shape | Dazzle Camouflage in WWI

Wasp-like dazzle camouflage by Alon Bement in SHIP SHAPE

From Peter Krass, Portrait of War: The US Army's First Combat Artists and the Doughboy's Experience in WWI. New York: Wiley and Sons, 2007, p. 18—

On day nine out to sea, [Ernest] Peixotto and [Wallace] Morgan's convoy was met by a dozen destroyers that were to escort them into port. The coloring of these warships caught Peixotto's eye; they were "brilliantly camouflaged like wasps, queerly striped with black and white, with spots between of yellow, gray-blue, and water-green"—the softened tone of Monet's paintings. "Like wasps too they darted around us," he wrote, "zigzagging across our bows, dropping astern, watchful, then, with a burst of speed, forging up ahead again."