History of Camouflage Comic Book

Camouflage comic © John Kramer

Thanks to Claudia Covert, Special Collections Librarian at the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, for alerting us to the recent posting of an online comic book version of the history of modern camouflage. Produced by Washington DC comic book artist John Kramer and published by The Wilson Quarterly, the 10-page cartoon story, titled HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT: WWI, WWII, and [the] Surprising History of Camouflage, is well-worth an online visit, albeit Abbott Thayer becomes "Abott Thayer," and it's regrettably skimpy on sources.

comical British camouflaged shooting jackets in 1894

suggested shooting jackets

Above This is a Victorian-era cartoon (most likely British), published in 1894, artist and source publication unknown. The heading on the original was Comic Pictures, with a subtitle of Some Suggestions for Shooting Jackets. It has no direct connection to the article that follows below in this blog.

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CAMOUFLAGE IS JUST GOOD OLD BLUFF APPLIED TO WAR TACTICS: The Greeks and Their Wooden Horse Originated It, the French Developed It and the Yanks Excel at it, in Salt Lake Herald-Republican-Telegram, April 28, 1918, p. 10—

Some folk will take you clear back to the wooden horse of Troy for the origin of camouflage, and still others insist that it was first used somewhere beyond that. Then there are those who contend that it was first used in this, the Great World War.

We do know of instances where camouflage was used in the fairly ancient history of our own country, as a country or colony, and we are fairly well up on the methods of utilizing it now that it has passed through its comic supplement stage and all the comic artists have had their go at it.

The country is taking it in its serious aspect and the war department is encouraging the best thought which can be concentrated on the subject.

It has been said by teachers of the art that camouflage, simmered down and stripped of its glamor, is nothing other than the good old peacetime game of bluff applied to war tactics. If it be that, then who shall excel the American at it?

CAMOUFLAGE FOR 'ALL
In the accompanying illustration are shown only a few of the many, many means of utilizing the art in land warfare. There are countless other tricks on land and more being used in sea fighting and air battles.

The camouflaged road Is the result of hanging boughs and brown cloth drapes over a road as flies hang over a stage. Troop movements may be made over such a road in comparative safety. The big French gun In Flanders pictured here is painted so as to harmonize with a wooded background. The oddly striped tree climber may hide without great risk of being seen by aviators of the enemy, in a tree top while he does sniping or observation work. The papier mache horse being used as an intelligence or listening station appears to the enemy as a horse carcass, not a sight to arrouse suspicion in No Man's Land.

Then there is the camouflage of so wrapping a man that he appears to be a tree stump.

ABSENCE COST LIVES
The olive drab and khaki uniforms worn by our fighting men today are the outgrowth of the costly absence of camouflage ln the past. The blue uniforms worn in the Civil War were so much in contrast with any surroundings the soldiers might lave that the boys of the South could find their marks readily. And the gray of the Southern troops was little better. Both were infinitely more serviceable, however, than the bright red uniforms worn in earlier wars by the British.

Braddock's famous defeat by the Indians may be traced to the shining targets offered by the scarlet uniforms of Braddock's men for the arrows of the Indians, while the slim, brown figures of the natives blended so harmoniously with the tree trunks, the ground and the underbrush that the Britons could scarcely see where they were.

In the East have sprung up, since the war sucked the United States into itself, numerous schools for camoufleurs with official and semi-official training forces. Artists are going into the work with enthusiasm.

JUNGLE ITS ORIGIN
The American Institute of New York is beginning next month a series of lectures to engineers and painters on "Camouflage as an Aid to Modern Warfare." Lieutenant H. Ledyard Towle of the Seventy-First NYG machine gun company, an expert camoufleur and an artist and painter of some note, is to deliver the Ieclures.

In a lecture recently before New York artists, Lieutenant Towle sald:

"The Lord knows more about camouflage than any of us amateurs. Consider the lion and his tawny mane. In repose he Is a tiny undulation on the sunburnt clap; the zebra, with his stripes, lost in the shadow of the tall grasses: the leopard, with his spots, crouched for a spring amid the sun flecked leaves of a tree, who would suspect his presence? Isn't it astonishing that with such examples of the value of protective colors that we have done so little to develop the idea? The chameleon gives us the art perfectly demonstrated."

The French made the first effective use of camouflage in this war. They were the first to see that its results warranted specialization in it. After the Germans were turned back at the Marne and the lines of opposing trenches stretched themselves from the sea to the Swiss border, the fight in the west theatre resolved itself into a standoff as far as actual fighting was concerned, and the battle became one of wits. Fool the other fellow and victory was yours.

FRENCH WERE FIRST
The French withdrew from the fighting ranks artists, painters, metal workers, photographers, architects and engineers. A special corps of camoufleurs was formed. Their work has been marvelous.

The camoufleur's art has reached its apex in No Man's Land. The toe of a dead soldier's boot may house tho eye of a periscope and from the boot to a trench may run the tunnel through which the observer communicates. An old post, left standing after the wire entanglement it supported has been shot away, may have a periscope eye and a tunnel. A limp form in the uniform of a soldier enmeshed in the wire may lure comrades out to bring It in. And when they touch it they may set off a bomb which ends their quest—and their days.

The first company of American camoufleurs is encamped just outside Washington and volunteers and drafted men aro being sent there weekly from all parts of the country.

To use the words of Lieutenant Towle again:

"If the wit and technical cleverness of a few men can be the large factor in saving a regiment, then the time and trouble taken in the process of training for camouflage will have been well spent." 

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

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

The wizard of oz becomes schooled on camouflage

Walt McDougall (1904), Land of Oz comic page

There is no denying that American artist Walt McDougall (1858-1938) was an extraordinary cartoonist. His work is funny and beautifully drawn. Above is a single full-color newspaper page (1904) for L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz. And at the bottom of this blog post is another full-page comic (1897), amazingly structured, in which works by a number of cartoonists are featured—McDougall's work is inside the triangle on the left of the page. Both of these cartoons are in public domain, and can be accessed as image files on McDougall's Wikipedia page.

McDougall was also interested in camouflage, and he wrote a long newspaper account about that subject during World War I. I've republished the entire text below. But I haven't republished the illustrations he made for it. None of those drawings are of the quality of his cartoons, and one of them is blatantly offensive: it shows military brass having drinks at the Army and Navy Club (where I once lectured—on the subject of camouflage) in Washington DC. An African-American waiter is shown as a clueless black-faced minstrel, as was thought to be funny back then. It brings up painful memories of my own childhood when, as recently as the early 1950s, the movie theatre in the small Iowa community in which I grew up was still featuring "minstrel shows" in which white musicians (there were no black residents at the time) would perform in blackface. With that as a timely disclaimer, here is the text of McDougall's article—

Walt M’Dougall, TRAILING THE CAMOUFLAGE IN WASHINGTON JUNGLES: Certain Adventures of a Patriot Who Endeavored to Do His Bit for Our Newest Art: An “Inside Story” of the Incident That Gave Birth to Camouflage, Written and Illustrated by the Man Who Hereby Sets Forth His Claim to Rank as the Original “Camouflager,” in The Washington Post, June 10, 1917, p. 3—

Camouflage is pronounced as it is spelled, with the “g” soft and mushy, as in “garage,” and with the accent on the “cam.” The art and mystery of concealing batteries, roads and large, important officials by means of artificial scenery was given this name by the French, who knew that it would be a long time before people could determine whether it was a new kind of cheese or a bit of feminine wearing apparel.

Some time ago I became possessed of certain reliable information regarding camouflage through a returned Canadian officer and promptly addressed the War Department a fervent appeal to send me to the French front to gather further information, models, data, and insect parasites for the instruction of our own army. I realized that the task required the imagination of a playwright, the art of a scene painter, the skill of a stage carpenter, the strength of a blacksmith, the nerve of a literary agent, the stomach of a hyena, and the nerve of a motion picture substitute.

Nobody knows what became of that appeal.

New York Got the Edge
Two weeks ago I arrived in Florida in response to a suggestion from a high official to present my plea in person, and almost immediately discovered that while I had been dreaming under the orange blossoms a national camouflage division had been organized in New York, with units in various other cities, and that a number of able-bodied artists already were drilling at night in vacant lots. It was even said that they were wearing uniforms. Now, New York usually tumbles to a new thing only after all the rest of the country has tried it out, and then it starts it off as a new and original fad, but in this case, it seems to have got there first.

Somewhat startled and nervous, I devoted my initial efforts to ascertaining just how far the movement had progressed. Hastily seeking the aforesaid prominent official I was guided to the War Department, where we consulted a bland and amiable Major Blank, who, after candidly admitting that he had never heard of camouflage, said that from what I had revealed to him he didn’t think it quite fair to pester the department about such piffle when it was so busy with really important matters.

“Major, on my word of honor as a gentleman,” I repeated, “I assure you that while camouflage is a new war game, it isn’t piffle. It is saving thousands of lives and guns and military material in France.”

Patting me soothingly on the shoulder, he suggested: “Why not go over on your own account as a private citizen and study it?”

When I asked him, rather testily, I admit, how long he thought I’d last gumshoeing around the French front with a camera, a sketchbook, and a tape measure, picking centimeters and calories off the big guns, he appeared a trifle hurt, but when he got his breath he said that the War Department couldn’t bother with “frills” at this time and that perhaps I might manage to get away with the second or third division of troops going over.

I asked the next man who was consulted, point-blank, if he had ever heard of camouflage.

Thought It a New Insect Powder
“Yes,” said he in a flash; “It is the new insect powder they’re getting from the Phillippines.” However, he was only a civilian.

I began to see, dimly, that my task was going to difficult. We went to the Cosmos Club to dine, where I met an African explorer, who wanted to bet me that camouflage was a subspecies of the dingo family. Late at night, reduced to a sort of dumb despair, I went to the Press Club, where I encountered artist Felix Mahoney, [a cartoonist as well] who proved to have at his finger-ends all the knowledge there is about “Who’s Who and Where” in camouflaging. He formed the local unit and invited me to witness the evening drill the following night. I was surprised to learn that they were not drilling with paintbrushes, but actually learning the military manual under the instruction of a real army officer. This looked like something really tangible.

I also learned that evening that among other things it is supposed that “the camouflage artist is like any other soldier. He goes where he is sent, and, in addition to his arms, he carries a 6-inch sketch box, which is his palette, one-half of the box fitting on his thumb in true palette fashion, while the other half holds his little sketch boards and colors. The scene to be ‘camouflaged’ is sketched exactly as it appears in colors that match the true ones. This sketch is conveyed to the base of operations, where other artists copy it upon a large canvas. The framework, if there is any, is designed and the finished ‘scene’ is rushed to the spot it is intended to conceal.”

When I pointed out that if the scenery was already there in situ it scarcely needed to be disguised by an artificial creation precisely imitating its details to conceal it from the enemy, I was regarded with pity.

He Is the Original Camouflager
Now, I need to explain, perhaps, my interest in this matter. Long before the famous bank robbery where the burglars painted a fake safe and robbed the genuine one behind it, in my boyhood days, in fact, I cleverly painted a life-size effigy of my slight and skinny self and set it up in the cornfield where I was supposed to be watching the crows, and while mother thought I was on the job, I was lying under a willow by the creek fishing for perch. While I expose past duplicity with regret, my mother being long dead, I feel it needful to establish my claim as the original camouflager.

Well, I had already begun to suspect that I stood a swell chance of getting to the front, but I persisted. The next day I met a man in another department who confessed that he had heard that the French used artists in the army to “stimulate scenery” in deceiving the enemy. Needless to say, he meant “simulate.” I saw the young and enthusiastic artists drill that evening and conferred with them. They expected, every one of them, to be sent to the front, but they were rather misty as to how they were to be instructed, and where, in their special form of military art.  I took occasion to explain that I deserved to be sent over in order to qualify as an instructor for just such lads back here at home. None of these boys wanted to be generals or even captains—they wanted to camouflage.

After three days I got so that I found myself in the Army and Navy Club ordering camouflage cocktails for an aged major general and I realized that I had reached a critical stage. I proceeded to obtain a new slant on the subject. Armed with a note from Mr. Tumulty I sought the Assistant Secretary of War, but his private secretary, an alert and observing young fellow, seeing the wild, haunted look in my eyes, the hectic four-flush mantling my cheeks and my ill-concealed impatience, steered me up against some husky colonels in a remote part of the building. These officers, kindly and genial, humored me by listening to my ravings, and finally Mr. McKenna sent me by the department bus to the War College, having previously telephoned General Kuhn that I was coming.

They Treated Him Kindly
Right here I want to express my appreciation of the unfailing kindness, cheerful patience and delightful good humor of every official whose valuable time I monopolized during the week. Although they uniformly refused to take me seriously, they took me in and made me at home in every case. I lunched with the general staff on Friday, after walking many miles across country to the War College, a point usually reached only by airplane and wireless, and although I had neither guide, compass or chart, I got there before everything was eaten.

Here I received another shock. I found that General Kuhn actually knew all about camouflage! I mean, all that is known in the United States. That is nearly nothing, but the general had heard about what had been revealed. His delightful personality eased the pain I felt when I saw that he also regarded camouflage as frillery and military lingeries, as it were, but when he kindly enlightened me as to the number (something like 76,000) of eager, earnest souls who ardently desired to sail for France this week in order to study gas-bombing, trench ventilation, painless starvation, cathedral reconstruction, explosive frankfurters, dog training, the German system of converting their dead into toilet soaps, smokeless tobacco and the like on the battlefield, I saw a great light. I now perceive why departmental business proceeds slowly and painfully. If officials are as invariably polite, courteous, and obliging to every crank, bug, and jobseeker as they were to me it is wonderful that anything is accomplished, and it follows that camouflaging the departments is as necessary as anything else.

He Gave Up the Quest
The last man I interviewed on the subject was the celebrated sculptor, Mr. Paul Barlett, chairman of the executive committee of the Washington camouflage division. He assured me that a small army of artists, eminent and otherwise, was preparing to go to France, where they were to take up this pursuit.

“Do you mean that the government will send this division over as an actual organization of artists?” I asked.

He intimated that such was his understanding.

“And when this army, well-drilled and qualified as soldiers, arrives at the front, will it be marched somewhere and proceed to become students of camouflage, under the instruction of 700 busy scene painters now occupied in disguising France, or will they just camouflage around, picking up the art between the barrage fire and the hospitals?” I persisted.

Mr. Bartlett’s manner suggested that my question peeved him, or, at least, so it seemed to me, and I obtained no answer to the question of how our earnest seekers after knowledge would become qualified to proceed to camouflage. However, this finished my efforts to inject my own personality into the movement. I will not see France until the war is over, and I will never know more about camouflaging than anybody else does.

Walt McDougall and others (1897)

failed camouflage / wife's hat must not be so employed

Above This cartoon was published in the Boston Sunday Post on September 23, 1932. The title reads ABRAHAMSON'S CAMOUFLAGE FAILETH with the subtitle of WIFE'S HAT MUST NOT BE SO USED. Where one might expect the artist's name, it simply reads "(Silent Comic.)"

So—who might that "silent comic" be? There is an unreadable signature of sorts at the bottom right. It might possibly be MEB or Michael Edward Brady (1896-1941). But I doubt it. 

One of Brady’s other cartoons was published beside it on the same newspaper page, and the layout makes it confusing to know if this one is his also. Regardless, there is a helpful article about Brady’s life, written by Alex Jay, which can be accessed here online.

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RELATED LINKS    

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

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Eric Sloane | Camouflage and Comic Books

Eric Sloane (1942), Camouflage Simplified

We've talked about American artist Eric Sloane (1905-1985) in an earlier blog, specifically in reference to a 60-page Illustrated guidebook called Camouflage Simplified, published in 1942. It's easily our all-time favorite comic-style overview of the subject. It's a delight just to look at the drawings, such as the examples above and below. It turns out that, according to the Hathi Trust Digital Library, the book is now in public domain, and is available in full online. Take a look at it; it's a pleasurable way to spend some time.

Eric Sloane (1942), Camouflage Simplified

I Never Met a Morphosis I Didn't Like / Smoke Dreams

Two British comic drawings (c1890s)

As I was growing up, adults used to discourage boys from smoking by saying, "Don't smoke or you'll turn into a cigarette." I never quite knew what that meant. But it was an ancient admonition, of the sort that I grew up on. I confirmed that about ten years ago, when I ran across a Victorian-era cartoon (it's the bottom row in the image above) in which (left to right) a smoking Cub Scout turns into a cigarette. Aha! Exactly as anticipated.

More recently, maybe ten days ago, I ran across another (no doubt British) cartoon, as seen in the upper row, in which a man (not a boy it seems) also becomes a cigarette. It even had a title that read THE EVOLUTION OF A CIGARETTE. No doubt a poke at Charles Darwin.

To me, these are of additional interest because they are Darwin-era examples of comic metamorphosis, which is of considerable interest. I have sometimes tried to write about that subject, not very successfully, and as recently as earlier this year, I gave an online talk about it, titled I Never Met a Morphosis I Didn't Like, as seen in the title slide below.

One might also benefit from my video on varieties of creativity, which is free to view online.

a slide talk on metamorphosis / Roy R. Behrens c2025

Frederick Waugh, Camouflage and Dickie Dare

Coulton Waugh, Dickie Dare (1943)

Above (detail) Coulton Waugh, portion of the comic strip Dickie Dare (showing "dazzle camouflage" on the right), from the Harrisburg Telegraph (Harrisburg PA), December 27, 1943.

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Ray Goulding of the Bob & Ray radio comedy team was a high school classmate of beatnik novelist Jack Kerouac. Film actress Anne Baxter was the granddaughter of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who was also related by marriage to New York urban planner Robert Moses. Western gunfighter Wild Bill Hickok (James Butler Hickok) was related to Civil War general and politician Benjamin F. Butler, as well as to Adelbert Ames II (inventor of the Ames Distorted Room) and to writer George Plimpton. Humorist S.J. Perelman was the brother-in-law of novelist Nathaniel West. And finally (this is the punchline) American artist and ship camoufleur Frederick Judd Waugh (whom we have blogged about before) was the father of cartoonist (Frederick) Coulton Waugh (1896-1973), best-known for the comic strips Dickie Dare and Hank.

The elder Waugh died in 1940. In browsing through various panels of the younger Waugh's Dickie Dare, we've found several references to camouflage, including indirect homages to his father's designs for WWI-era "dazzle camouflage" (see example above).

The F. Coulton Waugh Papers are housed at Syracuse University, while other Waugh Family Papers are in the collection of the Archives of American Art. Among the folders in the latter is one described as "World War I Material, circa 1914. Likely Coulton Waugh's, possibly Frederick Judd Waugh's." Since it was the father (not the son) who served in the war, our suspicion is that this may be his material. It may even pertain to ship camouflage.

See also: Roy R. Behrens, FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT and Mason City: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016). 

camouflage / his master looks exactly like our egg man

Above W. Heath Robinson, "Camouflage vs. camouflage" from his invention series. Public domain. 

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John Lewis (who was himself a WWII camoufleur), Heath Robinson: Artist and Comic Genius (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), p 36—

When working in the garden he [British illustrator W. Heath Robinson] was in the habit of wearing the most dreadful old clothes and because of this was more than once mistaken for the gardener. On one occasion an artist dressed in a pale violet-grey suit, with a black velvet collar, called on the Robinsons. He saw Will digging in the garden and shouted across to him: “Is your master in, my man?” “I’Il go and see,” muttered Will and disappeared indoors, only to appear a moment later in a tidier jacket and with his hair brushed, to make himself known to the other artist. What the outcome of this was, I do not know. In his autobiography he tells this tale and gives the unnamed visitor the soubriquet of Renée de Boudoir.

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Max Eastman, Great Companions (New York: Farrar Straus and Cudahy, 1942)—

[In his later life, American philosopher John Dewey] moved out on Long Island, and preserved his contact with reality by raising eggs and vegetables and selling them to the neighbors… [He received an urgent order one day] from a wealthy neighbor for a dozen eggs, and the children being in school, he himself took the eggs over in a basket. Going by force of habit to the front door, he was told brusquely that deliveries were made in the rear. He trotted obediently around to the back door, feeling both amused and happy. Some time later, he was giving a talk to the women's club of the neighborhood, and his wealthy customer, when he got up to speak, exclaimed in a loud whisper: "Why, he looks exactly like our egg man!"  

A camouflaged cure for a morning hangover

Below This camouflage cartoon by American artist Walter Hoban (1890-1939) was featured in his comic strip Jerry on the Job. It was published in the Oregon Daily Journal (Portland OR) on August 16, 1917.

A CAMOUFLAGE DRINK in the Times-Tribune (Scranton PA) on December 11, 1917—

Making the morning after seem like the night before is the mission of the camouflage, the newest drink. Camouflage, as every student of the war knows, means "making things seem what they ain't." Thus the camouflage looks like a glass of milk, but has the far different effect so much desired on cold, gray mornings. In a word it is a "pick me up" that no man need blush to order after he gets into his working clothes. It is composed as follows: One-half jigger of apple brandy, a half jigger of dry gin, white of an egg, tablespoon of cream and a pinch of powdered sugar. The mixing glass should then be filled with cracked ice, the contents shaken well and strained into a small tumbler. Take two of these and, it is said, one hears sweet music; three and one grabs the next ship for the land of hot dogs, limburger and sauerkraut to take a wallop at the kaiser.

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CAMOUFLAGE in the Bridgeport Times and Evening Farmer (Bridgeport CT) on October 13, 1917—

If I could use war tactics,
Said the football player fellow,
I'd camouflage the pigskin
By painting it bright yellow;
We'd then fool our opponents,
And win the game hands high,
'Cause they'd think we had a pumpkin
And were going to make a pie.

Cartoonist Walter Hoban | Jerry's Dog is Camouflaged

Below This camouflage cartoon by American artist Walter Hoban (1890-1939) was featured in a comic strip series called Jerry on the Job. It was published in the South Bend News Times (South Bend IN), July 28, 1917.

Courtney Allen / Illustrator, Performer and Camoufleur

Courtney Allen

There was an American illustrator and performer named Courtney (Charles) Allen (1896-1969), who was also a camouflage artist.  He was an interesting character, and he surely deserves recognition. Below is information I found some time ago, which I subsequently shared with askART.

When the US entered World War I in 1917, he was working as an artist for the Wilmington Star and the Washington Times. He joined the US Army and served in France as a camouflage artist. A front page article in the Washington Times in 1919 states that 37 officers and 445 camouflage artists have returned to Washington barracks after ten months of overseas service.

Among the returning camoufleurs, the article states, was Sergeant Courtney C. Allen, “former artist for The Times,” as well as five other artists from Washington DC, including Captain E.R. Keane, Private David Rubin, Private James Allen, Private George Park, and Private James O’Shea. Four of the five were pictured in a group photograph in the same issue, titled “Four Washington ‘Camoufleurs,’ Just Back.” The news photograph (including the headshot of Allen below) has not stood the test of time.

Courtney Allen (1919)

“Sergeant Allen,” the article continues, “was in the fighting at Chateau-Thierry, Soissons, Saint-Mihiel, and at other points along the American line. ‘At Chateau-Thierry we did our best work,’ he said to a Times reporter.”

It may also be surprising to learn that Courtney Allen was also a wildly popular stage musician and comic performer. While studying at Charles Hawthorne’s Cape Cod school, he and five other artists (“all veterans of the World War”) established a popular Provincetown MA coffee house, on Lewis Wharf, called the “Sixes and Sevens,” in which they functioned as the cooks, waiters and entertainers. An article and photograph of the “Big Six” players were published in the Boston Globe in 1920.

In that news feature, Courtney Allen is singled out as especially popular with the crowd. He is, states the article, “variously known among the crowd as ‘Cootie’ Allen and ‘Cuskoo.’” He “is a clever performer with the ukulele and the steel guitar and is kept very busy when the coffee house is crowded—as it has been every evening since it opened.” The raucous new business was seen as a successor to the famous Provincetown Players, who had moved to McDougal Street in Greenwich Village by then.

In August 1921, Allen is mentioned in a Boston Post article as having been a great success at the annual Provincetown Costume Ball. Dressed as “a Japanese coolie,” he received an honorable mention in the costume judging. The Second Prize was awarded to artist Lawrence W. Grant (dressed as a “snake charmer”), who had also served as an Army camouflage artist in France.

For most of his life, he appears to have made his living as a magazine and newspaper illustrator, as in the example shown at the top of this blog post.

Sources

“Camouflage Men Come to Capital” in Washington Times. January 31, 1919, p. 1.

“Costume Ball Like Fairyland” in Boston Post. August 6, 1921.

“Courtney Allen” in Who Was Who in American Art.

Paul Stanwood, “Provincetown Finds Fun at the ‘Sixes and Sevens’ Coffee House” in Boston Globe. July 18, 1920.

ship from which Hart Crane committed suicide / 1932

USS Orizaba

The American Modernist poet, Hart Crane, took his own life at age 32, by jumping from a ship into the Gulf of Mexico while en route to New York in 1932. 

Shown here are two views of the ship that he was traveling on, the USS Orizaba. At the time, however, it would not have been camouflaged. These are photographs from World War I (c1918), at which time it had been painted in a multi-colored “dazzle camouflage” scheme. As is evident, the camouflage patterns on the ship’s two sides are substantially different, as was standard wartime practice. The top image shows the port side, while the other shows the starboard.

USS Orizaba

As noted by art historian Henry Adams in The Golden Age of Cleveland Art: 1900 to 1945 (Cleveland OH: Cleveland History Center, 2022), Crane grew up in northeastern Ohio, where his father was a restaurant owner and candy manufacturer. In view of Crane’s suicide, it is a darkly comic irony that his father was the inventor of the candy known as the Life Saver.

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

French Camouflage and Criminals

WWI French camoufleurs wearing hooded cagoule outfits

In an earlier post, we reproduced various images of French camoufleurs dressed in paint-streaked hooded outfits, the term for which was cagoule. These were adopted early in World War I by artists in the French infantry, to prevent themselves from being seen by aerial observers as they manned field artillery. Above is the cover of a French magazine (dated June 5, 1915) in which soldiers are wearing uniforms that look eerily like a mottled variation on the sinister ceremonial hoods of the American Ku Klux Klan. At the time, the French public was disturbed by this radical change of attire. This was described thirty years ago by art historian Elizabeth Louise Kahn in The Neglected Majority: "Les Camoufleurs," Art History, and World War I (University Press of America, 1984)—

Hidden beneath camouflaged cagoules…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.

Later on the same page, she mentions that one of the reasons for the initial disdain for camouflage was that "the very term camouflage held a devious and unseedy [sic] meaning for French readers of popular literature…" Prior to the founding of the first camouflage unit, it "was a word used to describe evil criminals who lurked about city streets and hid themselves from the police" (p. 148).

We were reminded of this when recently we ran across various images from French popular literature and film, before and during WWI, of a fictitious criminal named Fantomas. Created in 1911 by French writers Marcel Allain and Pierre Souvestre, the character was central to more than forty crime novels. The popularity of the books was amplified by various adaptations for film, television and comic books.

French crime character Fantomas

I mention this because in some of the images (such as those posted here), this crime character has an uncanny resemblance to a WWI hooded camoufleur. If Fantomas was on the minds of the French public at the outset of the war, no wonder they viewed with suspicion the cagoules (the "hoodies") of the camoufleurs.

books & historic prints and photographs

Cartoonist Cliff Sterrett | Safety in Camouflage

Below This camouflage cartoon by American artist Cliff Sterrett (1883-1964) was featured in a comic strip series called Polly and Her Pals. It was published in the Salt Lake Herald (Salt Lake UT) on September 25, 1918. In an earlier post, we featured another Sterrett cartoon.

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.

face camouflage / sidestep the flu by growing a beard

Above Rex Whistler, comic portrait (repeated five times) of a bearded man whose identity changes when positioned upsidedown (c1930).

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Anon, HIRSUTE VEIL CAMOUFLAGE IS FLU GERM DUPE, in Salt Lake Herald Republican, December 15, 1918, p. 48—

Further hint to the flu dodger—masquerade behind nature’s mask, the moustache. Or, as a further safeguard, raise whiskers.

’Tis thus some of the health authorities advise. A fuzzy growth, whether on lip or jowl, they explain, is a germ strainer. The burglarious bacillus, trying to break in, has about as much chance as a camel at the needle’s eye or a carrot in a colandar.

If the moustahe or whiskers prove to be real preventatives, lots of Salt Lake men who pine to retire from an ailing world will take the hirsute veil. Faces which would have been displayed merely as faces may take on the aspect of sylvan retreats and bosky dells. Razor and scythe will be laid away and phizes will be allowed to sprout in all their wild carefree abandon. Familiar countenances will be concealed behind an impenetrable camouflage and the only recognizable features when friend meets friend will be a pair of eyes, a twinkling nose and two untrammeled ears.

The local Adonis, whose finely-chiseled beauty won the hearts of all feminine beholders, will appear in his bewhiskered role as plain as a welcome mat. The homely citizen will resemble a discarded Christmas tree, which has reached a sere and yellow past. It will be a sad day for the barbers, but the hedge trimmers and landscape gardeners may build up a profitable business.

If Salt Lake men decide to go in for moustaches and whiskers, the caravan-series may become strangely quiet. For not a one of them will have the hardihood to order soup.

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

Sale-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

surrealism / metamorphic shape-shifting in chalk talks

Chalk talk panel sequence

When I spoke recently at the Hearst Center for the Arts about Salvador Dali’s visit to Iowa in 1952, I noted the resemblance between the Surrealists’ use of metamorphic shape-shifting, in which a familiar form is made to look like something else, and the use of visual puns in cartooning and other popular art.

Long before the Surrealists, visual wit was commonly used by artists, illustrators, cartoonists, and countless others. This may be of particular interest because the faculty committee who arranged for Dali’s visit was headed by a University of Northern Iowa faculty member (theatre and radio) named Herbert (Herb) Hake.

In addition to his well-known work as a theatre set designer and founder of the campus radio station, Hake gave comic cartoon talks on aspects of Iowa history. He did this through “chalk talks,” a traditional stage presentation that used metamorphic picture sequences in which a thing's identity evolves from one panel to the next. An excellent example is reproduced above.

In Hake’s presentations (from A Cartoon History of Iowa) as shown below, he begins by talking about one thing (on the left), then adds to that drawing to make it into something else (on the right). In other contexts, this “trick” of concealing one thing in another is also commonly known as an “embedded figure” or a “camouflaged figure.”

Herb Hake, chalk talk drawings

 

Krazy Kat, Worden Wood, and WWI Ship Camouflage

George Herriman (1904)

Of late I have been reading a book about the American cartoonist and comic artist George Herriman, best known as the author / illustrator of Krazy Kat. I recently received the book as a gift from a friend, former student and colleague, Wisconsin artist Craig Ede. The book, which was written by Michael Tisserand, is Krazy: George Herriman: A Life in Black and White (HarperCollins, 2016). It is wonderfully detailed and well-researched.

One of its illustrations is reproduced above. It’s a Herriman cartoon that appeared in the New York American on May 3, 1904. It’s an early example of a kind of visual stop-motion effect, which calls up memories of the photographic experiments of Étienne-Jules Marey and Eadweard Muybridge, as well as certain aspects of Italian Futurism, subjects that I’ve blogged about before.

I was surprised to learn about Herriman’s link to Arizona and the Navajo, and about his friendship with John and Louisa Wetherill, who were prominent trading post owners. There is a possibility that, through them, he may have been acquainted with my relatives, the Newcombs, who owned various trading posts on the Navajo reservation in New Mexico.

Also, I was not far into the book when I ran across the name of Worden Wood, a fellow cartoonist and associate of Herriman. I have earlier blogged about Wood, because he served as a ship camouflage designer during World War I. Earlier, he had been in the Naval Reserve during the Spanish-American War, and, following that, had participated in General John J. Pershing’s pursuit of Pancho Villa. He rejoined the Naval Reserve in 1917 and soon after was assigned to ship camouflage.

A search of vintage newspapers reveals that Wood was injured in a car accident in August 1916, when he ”undertook to dispute the right of way with a six cylinder car.” Later that month, while serving near El Paso, he rode his horse Cleopatra to town to buy a jar of raspberry jam. But the horse stumbled in the dark, and the jam jar shattered, leaving stains of red preserves on Wood’s uniform and hands. As a practical joke, when Wood arrived in camp that night, he acted as if he were wounded. The medic was called, and it was soon discovered that the blood was jam. 

Two months earlier, he had prevented a dog from being severely beaten by its owner, when he grabbed the owner’s cane and broke it into pieces. No doubt, his life was eventful.

Do you follow me? That's someways behind I'd say

Above Little Pal comic strip by Leo O'Mealia, in The Sacramento Bee, January 10, 1918.

two boys beneath a coat become a circus elephant

Above Page with text for children from Clarence F. Carroll and Sarah C. Brooks, The Brooks Primer. New York: Appleton, 1906. Public domain.

•••

John Lewis, Heath Robinson: artist and comic genius. New York: Harper and Row, 1973, p. 192—

The repeated use of the camouflage theme in [William] Heath Robinson's Second World War cartoons may have had something to do with the fact that his eldest son Oliver was a Camouflage officer in the British Army. 

•••

VIDEO LINKS

Nature, Art, and Camouflage  

Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage