an excellent account of the word origin of camouflage

Philip Hale, music critic

There were at least two prominent people named Philip Hale, who were contemporaries and both from New England.

Philip Leslie Hale (1865-1931) was an American Impressionist artist, who was related to Nathan Hale and Harriet Beecher Stowe. His father was Edward Everett Hale. We mentioned him in our previous post, because one of his students was ship camoufleur Thomas Casilear Cole.

The second was a musician and prominent newspaper critic named Philip Hale (1854-1934). Beginning in 1903, he was affiliated with The Boston Herald, for which he wrote a column called As the World Wags. In one of his columns, which was published on January 24, 1918, he offered what is—undoubtedly—the most detailed and authoritative account of the origin of the French word camouflage, which had become widely adopted as an English term during World War I.

There is nothing else like it. Since it is long out of copyright and otherwise hard to locate, we are republishing the entire column, for the convenience of researchers, as follows—

A correspondent, whose letter was published last Monday, rejoices because "camouflage" has found its way into the English language. He prefers the word to "disguise."

"Camouflage," however, is loosely used, absurdly used by many, who are glad to Include in a sentence any word that seems to them new or "the thing,” although they are wholly ignorant of the true meaning.

In the definition of "camouflage" the standard French dictionaries are of little or no use. Littre gives "camouflet," the noun, meaning “a thick smoke that one blows maliciously into the nose of one with a lighted paper cone." To give a "camouflet" is to affront, mortify a person. "Camouflet" is also a mining term. This French word is an old one. It is defined in Cotgrave’s dictionary (1678) as "a snuft or cold pie, a smoakie paper held under the nose of a slug or sleeper." Now, a cold pie in old colloquial English meant an application of cold water to wake a sleeper. “To give cold pig" was another form, and it is still used. In dialect a "cold pie” is an accident to a train or carriage in a pit, a fall on the ice, a disappointment of any kind.

In more modern French-English dictionaries, a camouflet is a whift of smoke in the face; a stifler; an affront, rap over the knuckles, snub.

In Larousse, we find the noun”camouflement," slang for a disguise; the verb, "camoufler," slang, to disguise, or to paint oneself; and "camouflet," mortification. The word "camouflage" does not appear.

Let us look at the French slang dictionarles. Le Roux, edition of 1752: "Camouflet. A blow on the face." Scarron is quoted. Then: "It is also a trick played on a person asleep; here is the explanation. One takes a half sheet of paper, rolls it in the form of a cone, and lights one end, puts the lighted end in the mouth, and blows smoke through the other end into the nose of a sleeper. This makes him wake up at once. In this manner one breaks a person of the habit of sleeping at any moment. The word is also figuratively employed, and in this case means affront, mortification."

Delvau's "Dictionnaire de la Langue Verte," 1889. We find “Camouflement: disguise because the 'camoufle' of instruction and education deceives one.” "Camoufler, to instruct oneself, to serve oneself with the camoufle of intellectual and moral light." It should be remarked that in thieves' slang “camoufle” means candle. Delvau also gives “camouflerise," reflective verb, to disguise oneself. "Camouflage" is not given.

"Camouflement," disguise, is in Larchey's "Excentricites du Langage" (1865) and in Vidocqu's "Les Voleura" (1837).

Let Us look at more modern dictionaries. "Camouflage" is not in Marchand's "Modern Parisian Slang: Argot des Tranchees,” but "camouflet," a rebuke, is listed, also "se camoufler,” to make up one's face.

"Camouflage"' is not in Jean La Rue’s "Dictionnaire d'Argot."

We find "Camouflage" in Aristide Bruant's "L.'Argot au XXe Siecle," vol. I. Francals-Argot, as an equivalent of "Deguisement." The second volume, Argot-Francais, has not been published. Bruant is dead.

"Camouflage" with its present meaning was a French slang term in 1901 and probably for some years before.

We find "Camouflage" in the "Dictionnaire des Termes Militaires et de l'Argot Poilu," published in Paris (1916). “Camoufle. A lamp. Painting the face." "Camoufler. To make a ‘Camoufle,’ to paint." "Camouflage. The action of painting." “Camoufleur. An artist that transforms, by modifying the disposition, the general aspects, immovable things, cannon, anything exposed to the aim of the enemy.

Then there is the huge “Dictionnaire de la Langue Verte." by Hector France, a volume of nearly 600 pages, quarto, with three columns to the page. "Camouflage. The art of making up." There Is this quotation from Guy Tomel's “Le Bas du Pave Parisien": "The police show themselves very reserved on the subject of ‘camouflage,' because each one of them has his own methods which he does not wish to divulge; also because they make their transformations instinctively and would have all the trouble in the world to join theory with practice.” France also defines a "camoufle" (acute accent on the "e") as “a man wearing a false beard, or otherwise disguised." A "camoufleur" is a disguised policeman. "Camoufler la bibine" is to sell adulterated drinks.


It thus appears that the word “camouflage" did not come into the French language during the present war, and is not purely military slang. It is certainly as old as 1901; it was used in connection with policemen and with actors. Aristide Bruant defined it in 1901. Hector France began the publication of his dictionary, in bi-monthly parts, in 1898. "Camoufage" is on the 35th page.

In defining "se camoufler," the definition "se maquiller" is usually given. “Se maquiller" means to paint one's face, to put on rouge, to ruddle, to make up.

In his learned "Etudes de Philologie comparee sur l’Argot" (1856), Francisque-Michel, discussing the old word “camouflet,” says that as the smoke was usually blown into the face of sleeping lackeys, the word soon came to mean a flagrant affront, a great mortification. Pray, in what sense was the word used by the anonymous author of "L'Histoire de Camouflet, souverain potentat de l'empire d' Equivopolis” (1751)?

Thomas Casilear Cole / WWI ship camouflage artist

Thomas Casilear Cole

In the mid-19th century, there was a prominent trend in painting called the Hudson River School, which consisted of a cluster of landscape artists whose work was typically focused on the Hudson River Valley. The style’s founding artist was Thomas Cole (1801-1848), while another prominent member was John William Casilear (1811-1893).

Near the close of the century, when Thomas Casilear Cole (1888-1976) was born in Staatsburg-on-Hudson, he was named in honor of those two well-known painters. He initially studied at Harvard University, but eventually turned to art, in the course of which he studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and Boston, where among his teachers were Edmund Tarbell, Frank Benson, and Philip Hale. In 1912, he studied with Jean Paul Laurens at the Académie Julian in Paris. Over the course of his life, he was primarily known for his portraits.

Of particular interest for the moment is that Cole was a designer of ship camouflage during World War I. An article in the Art Digest (January 15, 1931, p. 13) states that he “served two years in the navy during the World War, designing many of the camouflage patterns that protected American ships.” A biographical entry in Who’s Who in New York (1924 ed.) claims that he was among the “original, and one of the principal designers of naval camouflage in that service.” Elsewhere, he is cited as having been a student at William Andrew Mackay’s camouflage school that had been established in Manhattan during World War I.

In contrast to the prestige of the name(s) with which he was christened, his work has a lack of distinction. So it may not be surprising how little is said of him (two brief sentences) in the Benezit Dictionary of Artists, with no mention of camouflage.

a checkered tablecloth / the man Picasso hated most

Juan Gris, Still Life with Checkered Tablecloth (1915)

Above An especially masterful painting by Spanish artist Juan Gris, titled Still Life with Checkered Tablecloth (1915). Metropolitan Museum of Art. Public domain. 

To a designer, what better proof is there that the most accomplished of the cubist artists was Juan Gris, not Pablo Picasso. What an extraordinary composition—how is it possible? I stand in awe. No wonder Gris was despised by Picasso: He was, according to Gertrude Stein, “the only person whom Picasso wished away.” Indeed, he was the only genuine threat.

•••

Anon. Sioux City Journal (Sioux City IA), August 29, 1921—

Little is seen or heard nowadays about the writers of vers libre or the cubist artists. Maybe they have gone where they belong—to camouflage.

not a camoufleur / Maine artist Willard W. Cummings

Willard W. Cummings

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

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

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

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

he painted camouflage on the sides of trucks & trains

Eisenstein and others in Japan

Above Such an astonishing photograph. Taken in the 1920s in Japan, this is a detail of a photograph of a larger group of those associated with Russian Constructivism. Here are writer Boris Pasternak, filmmaker Sergei Eisenstein, socialite Lilya Brik (wife of Osip Brik), and poet Vladimir Mayakovsky. Such intense personalities, at an especially mournful time in modern history.

•••

Marie Seton, Sergei M. Eisenstein: a biography. NY: Grove Press, 1960, p. 146—

One day he [Sergei Eisenstein] sat for many hours in the small unpretentious Lyons’ teashop next to the Holborn Underground [in Central London] with Paul Rotha. He drank several cups of coffee and “smoked like hell.” Normally he never smoked. But he had been with Rotha to the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons [aka Hunterian Museum]. He talked about the Russian Revolution and drew incessantly upon the marble table-top to illustrate the camouflage ideas used by the Red Army during the Civil War. [According to Seton, Eisenstein had “painted camouflage and propaganda on the sides of cattle-trucks and trains.”] From the museum of the Royal College of Surgeons to the Russian Civil War…There was a psychological thread linking the sights he has seen at the front and the sights in the museum. As he had once tried to conceal his innocence from his Red Army comrades by Rabelasian talk, so now Sergei Mikhailovich camouflaged his frustrations by speaking of psychoanalysis and smoking endless cigarettes.

as outlandish as a cow / one horn black the other blue

USS Federal in dazzle camouflage scheme, 1918

Francis McCullagh, Control of Food Gives Soviet Power Over Its Followers, in Philadelphia Inquirer, November 14, 1920, p. 43—

Another friend, whom I made was a Bolshevik functionary, of what is called the political department, who dabbled in a multitude of things. I once heard him lecture in a theatre on an opera which was about to be produced before workmen who had never been to an opera before in their lives, his object being to make these workmen appreciate music and the acting. He also lectured on literature, organized theatricals in factories and military barracks, taught muzhiks to write, wrote himself in the newspapers and painted the whole front of a Bolshevik bookshop with mad daubs of every possible color.

This latter achievement he described as Futurism, but it seemed to me an attempt to epitomize on a surface twenty feet square all the camouflage schemes devised for merchant steamers during the war. The sturdy, old-fashioned house on which this atrocity was perpetrated looked as outlandish as a cow that had one horn painted black, and the other sky blue, the tail green and the body in irregular patches of half a dozen different colors. I expressed no surprise since my entry into Bolshevik Russia I had quite lost the capacity for wonder.

American ship camoufleur / Henry Wadsworth Moore

Henry Wadsworth Moore

Recently I’ve run across multiple references to a World War I American ship camoufleur named Henry Wadsworth Moore (1879-1968). He was an artist, as noted in a news article (The Boston Herald, September 8, 1918), who was also “a marine camoufleur with the Emergency Fleet Corporation of the US Shipping Board.” In view of his name, he must have been an aristocrat from New England, and indeed that seems to have been the case. He was the great-grandson of Commodore Alexander Scammell Wadsworth of the frigate US Constitution; and the great-grand nephew of Lieutenant Henry Wadsworth, who served on the US Decatur during its action in Tripoli, and who was the uncle of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. “Other ancestors of note,” the article continues, “are General Peleg Wadsworth of Portland ME, and Colonel George Baylor of Virginia, both of whom were on General George Washington’s staff.”

I’ve also found online his WWI draft registration card, dated 1918, when he was age 39. He was living in Brookline MA, and was associated with the US Shipping Board at 45 Bromfield Street in Boston. He can only have served very briefly, because the war soon ended. It is doubtful that he served “abroad during the war,” as claimed in a subsequent article below. Later, in the 1930s, he was associated with the Works Progress Adminstration (WPA), at which time he was commissioned to paint a portrait of Frederick Douglass. Let’s hope it was a finer work than his magazine cover illustration for The Modern Priscilla (1913), as reproduced below.

•••

BOSTON SALON IS EXHIBITING MOORE’S WORKS in Salt Lake Herald-Republican (Salt Lake City UT), January 31, 1920, p. 2—

Attracting the attention of art connoisseurs from all parts of the east, an exhibition of the latest paintings of Henry Wadsworth Moore is currently being staged at Boston, according to word received in Salt Lake yesterday by the artist’s father-in-law.

Mr. Moore recently married Rosamond Ritchie, daughter of Judge M.L. Ritchie [of Salt Lake City]…

Mrs. Moore is at present with her husband at Boston. The artist passed several months in the service of the naval camouflage service abroad during the war. 

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

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

•••

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

Somewhere in New York.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"His favorite uncle,” I said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Hoping you are the same, I remain,

Yours
LEM

camouflaged autos are the latest bane of speed cops

disruptive shadows cast on jeeps

THAT AUTO HARD TO SEE? MAYBE IT’S CAMOUFLEUR’S WORK. The Toledo News-Bee (Toledo OH), October 19, 1917—

Camoufleur!

It sounds like a cuss word. But the motor patrolman who draws up alongside your auto, and calls you that [a camoufleur] is [being] polite, if sarcastic.

Camouflaged autos are the latest bane of the speed police.

The auto owner who covers his car with a yellow or neutral colored top, paints the body any one of a half dozen colors that blend with the road and sets the whole thing on wire wheels, invisible at a distance, is copying trench methods of making things “look like what they ain’t,” charge the road guardians.

So far no Toledo autoist has attempted to color his machine with patches of paint to represent trees and landscape, but many are trying colors that make for “low visibility” when approaching speed trappers.

perhaps the origin of the WWI phrase Easter Egg Fleet

unidentified WWI ship in dazzle camouflage (AI color)

Joseph Husband, On the Coast of France: The Story of the United States Naval Forces in French Waters. Chicago: AC McClurg, 1919, pp. 9-10—

Due to the unusually fantastic schemes of camouflage which disguised the ships of the Second Squadron, these yachts were commonly known as the “Easter Egg Fleet,” every conceivable color having been incorporated in a riotous speckled pattern on their sides.*

*Ships specifically cited include USS Corsair, USS Aphrodite, USS Noma, USS Kanawha, USS Vedette, USS Christabel, USS Harvard, and USS Sultana.

wartime use of plant material in relation to camouflage

WWI French observation post in dead tree

LITTLE SILVER MAN TO DISCUSS CAMOUFLAGE in Red Bank Register (Red Bank NJ), October 29, 1942, p. 20—

Stanley MacIntosh, Jr., of Point Rod, Little Silver, will address a meeting of the American Camouflage Corps to be held at the Mayflower Hotel in New York City Wednesday night on the subject "use of Plant Material and Its Relationship to Camouflage." Mr. MacIntosh will tell particularly of types of trees adaptable to adverse situations.

first camoufleur / screens to conceal roads in France

Above This drawing is in the collection of the University of Victoria Library in British Columbia, Canada. It is from a two-volume series of pen-and-ink drawings and watercolors, made during World War I by an unknown artist whose initials were “J.M.” It provides a clear portrayal of the installation of a screen that will conceal traffic and troop activities on a road. It has nothing to do with the story below about George L. Crossgrove, although he too may have camouflaged roads in France.

•••

Here is another curious claim about World War I camouflage and camoufleurs. The following is from an article in The Boston Post on September 16, 1917, with the headline IS FIRST U.S. CAMOUFLEUR: Dorchester Man Passes All Tests—

George L. Crossgrove of 69 Norton Street, Dorchester, bears the distinction of being the first camoufleur ever to have been enlisted in the army or navy of the United States. He has passed all examinations and inspections of the officers of the army recruiting office…and will soon be on his way to France.

The duty which Crossgrove will perform is to create camouflages in the vicinity of the trenches to be held by the American troops, with a view to deceiving the enemy. Crossgrove will be required to make a gun or trench appear to be where none exists and to hide either where they actually exist.

So unerring have the aviators and balloon pilots become in giving to the officers of their armies directions as to the locations of the guns and trenches of the enemies that the officers have found it necessary to use protection. The camoufleur may be called upon to build a scaffold above a gun and cover it with grass, hay or dirt to conceal the gun. He may also be required to locate a wooden gun in a place where no damage would be done by an enemy shell or bomb.

On the same day, there was further confirmation of Crossgrove’s assignment in the Sunday Morning Star (Wilmington DE). It states that George Leon Crossgrove (1881-1953), who was originally from Wilmington, but "for the past five years has been engaged in sign painting and theatrical construction work in Boston, has enlisted in the Camouflage Company…” He served in the US Army until December 24, 1918.

a claim about the origin of WWI US ship camouflage

Lake Pachuta duing WWI

Above Photograph of USS Lake Pachuta of Saginaw from an advertisement for Saginaw Shipbuilding Co. in International Marine Engineering (June 1919), p. 95—
•••

Until recently, I had never heard the name of Michael V. Dailey. While searching for leads in my research of the involvement of artists and others in the design of camouflage, I came across an article on a person with that name.

He was born in Massachusetts in 1872, and died at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Jamaica Plain, in Boston, February 2, 1959. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, but he evidently played some role in World War I. The article headline makes the claim that M.V. DAILEY DEVISED CAMOUFLAGE OF SHIPS DURING WORLD WAR I (The Boston Globe, February 3, 1959). Really? How interesting, since I have never run across his name in more than fifty years of researching the subject, during which my focus has frequently been on WWI ship camouflage.

But the article goes further. At two locations in the text, it appears to claim that not only did Mr. Dailey contribute to ship camouflage, it states that he was the “originator of ship camouflage during World War I.” A few lines later, more details are provided, as follow—

He was a special aide to the Secretary of War [which presumably refers to Newton Baker] in World War I when he received a special citation for his camouflage origination.

And so, I don’t know what to think. Is this true? Why haven’t I heard about it before? One has to wonder if there’s been some odd misunderstanding, inadvertent or otherwise. I suspect this sometimes happens, as when stories about one’s family’s past are repeated but not verified.

Clayter, Sullivan & other Pittsburgh Navy camoufleurs

Frederic C. Clayter / 1918

Above Many years ago, when we first wrote about the team of camouflage artists who designed US Navy ship camouflage with Everett Longley Warner during World War I, among those we cited was someone named Frederic Charles Clayter (1890-1978).

Earlier, we had unearthed a wartime government photograph of Clayter and others in the camouflage “model-making shop” In Washington DC, but we must not have known much more than that. In CAMOUPEDIA: a compendium of research on art, architecture and camouflage (2009), there is no biographical entry for him, although his name is listed in the caption for that photograph.

Clayter, working as a camoufleur in Washington DC

The above portrait photograph of him appeared in The Gazette Times (Pittsburgh, December 22, 1918, p. 1). The headline reads: CAMOUFLEUR IN US NAVY RETURNS TO INDUSTRIAL ART DEPARTMENT AT PITT. Professor Clayter, the article states, is—

head of industrial art education in the University of Pittsburgh, [and] has returned to the School of Education after having served in the camouflage section of the United States Navy. He enlisted in the navy last spring and received a leave of absence from the university…While in the navy he was associated with several well-known artists who were engaged in the same work.

Clayter was originally from Muskegon MI. In a newspaper obituary, he is described as a “master craftsman and jewelry maker,” who had studied at the Philadelphia Museum School of Art, and had been awarded a fellowship at the L.C. Tiffany Foundation in New York. He also studied goldsmithing in England. As a professor, he had taught at the University of Pittsburgh from 1916 to 1921, and at the Carnegie Mellon University from 1921 to 1956. In 1953, he was designated Pittsburgh Artist of the Year.

•••

In the photograph below (the same photograph as before, but cropped differently) four camoufleurs are pictured. They are (left to right) Kenneth MacIntire, Frederic C. Clayter, someone named Richards, and an artist named D. Frank (Sully) Sullivan (1892-1967). The only one yet to be identified is Richards.

Clayter (rear center) in model-making studio

According to an article in the Pittsburgh Daily Post (August 11, 1919, p 16)—

Sullivan had charge of public school industrial arts in Boston before the war and has just been discharged from the service where he was employed as a camouflage artist in Washington DC.

A few weeks in advance of that article, another notice (which includes a photograph of Sullivan, as shown below) had appeared in the Gazette Times (Pittsburgh, July 6, 1919), with the headline BOSTON MAN APPOINTED EXTENSION WORK CHIEF IN PITTSBURGH ACADEMY. It reads—

The appointment of [D. Frank] Sullivan of Boston as director of extension work for the Pittsburgh Academy has been announced by Director Herbert G. Lytle of the local school. Mr. Sullivan was recently relased from the Navy, where he was assigned to the headquarters of the naval camouflage department. He is a native of Massachusetts, and a graduate of the Massachusetts Normal Art School. He has been a member of the faculty of this school and of the Parlin School of Everett MA. Just before entering the service he was head of the department of mechanical drawing and drafting in the Pittsburgh Academy.

D. Frank Sullivan / 1919

 

In later years, Sullivan appears to have taught commercial art at Connelley Vocational School in Pittsburgh. In an article in the Pittsburgh Post Gazette (March 30, 1951) titled RESCUE OF SUSANNA, it is reported that Sullivan was the owner of a painting by Allesandro Pomi (1890-1976) titled Susanna. A month ago, the article states—

fire swept Mr. Sullivan’s studio in the Whitfield Building, East End, and destroyed practically everything. But Susanna was saved. He carried her out himself…

Alessandro Pomi, Susanna (193

Herter's mural in Paris / American Camouflage Corps

Albert Herter mural at the Gare de Paris-Est

We’ve talked about the Herter family before. The family was descended from the well-known Herter Brothers (Gustave and Christian), who were leading designer-craftsmen in New York in the 19th century. The son of Christian Herter was Albert Herter (1871-1950), who was a prominent muralist. In turn, his sons were Everit Herter (1894-1918), a muralist who was among the first to join the American Camouflage Corps during World War I, and who died in action while serving in France. A second son was Christian Herter (1895-1966), who was a highly regarded US statesman and served as Secretary of State.

In an earlier post about the family, we only briefly focused on a huge mural (40 feet wide, 15 feet high) that Albert Herter painted after the war and gave to the French people. It was in part a tribute to the French soldiers (called poilus, French slang for soldiers) who had served in the war. Less obviously, it was as well a tribute to his son. Appropriately, the mural was initially hung in the departure hall of the historic Gare de Paris-Est in Paris, a major railway terminal, from which so many soldiers had departed for the battlefield.

Recently, I was pleased to find a lengthy paper about that famous mural. It was written by Mark Levitch, and is titled "En Souvenir: Albert Herter’s Le Depart des Poilus, Aout 1914 at Paris-Est." It was published in a volume of essays about WWI artworks, edited by Margaret Hutchison and Steven Trost, titled Portraits of Remembrance: Painting, Memory, and the First World War (University of Alabama Press, 2020).

Levitch’s paper is particularly informative because it is based on extensive research, far more complete and detailed than earlier accounts. For example, I had not known, or perhaps I had forgotten, that another American camoufleur, named John Dwight Bridge, had assisted Albert Herter in completing the mural. As we posted earlier, Bridge is himself of interest because both he and Everit Herter were associated with Barry Faulkner (a muralist and co-founder of the American Camouflage Corps), who was the cousin and student of Abbott H. Thayer, the so-called “father of camouflage.” In the years following the war, Bridge married the widow of Everit Herter, Caroline Keck Herter.

In the process of painting this huge railway terminal mural, Albert Herter chose to quietly include members of his own family in his depiction of various families bidding farewell to their soldier sons. To anyone who was unaware of Everit Herter’s wartime death, the mural might easily be interpeted as a generic portrayal (neither factual nor specific) of the sorrow of saying goodbye to one’s soldier son—whose departure may be final.

But things did not work out as smoothly as that. In the years after the war, there was some resentment among the French public about what they saw as the tendency of Americans to claim excessive credit for the war’s success. As a result, there were times when Herter’s mural was seen not primarily as an all-inclusive tribute to French infantry and others, but rather as a means by which the sacrifice of Everit Herter—and the Herter family’s efforts—could upstage the achievements of others.

This was especially reinforced by the mistaken but often repeated claim that an especially prominent soldier in the center of the painting represents Everit Herter. That figure can be clearly seen online, in a full view of the mural. He is elevated above the others, with arms outstretched, so it doesn’t take much to imagine him as an allusion to Christ on the cross. Hence, one can see how people might assume that this was a slightly veiled tribute to Everit Herter. In various essays over the years, other figures were also mistakingly said to be members of the Herter family.

There is no disagreement that Herter family members are included in the mural. But Levitch denies that the soldier with the outstretched arms is Everit Herter. Instead, the Herter family is quietly clustered on the right. In a detail of the mural (as shown below, along with a diagram of the same section), Albert Herter (the muralist and the father) is holding flowers and clutching his chest (1). His wife (2) stands behind him, and their martyred son, Everit Herter peers out quietly from inside the train (3). Their daughter-in-law (4), the widow of Everit Herter is facing Everit’s father, her hand to her face. And Everit’s fellow camouflage artist (who is soon to marry the widow), John Dwight Bridge (5), is bending down and comforting the sons of the father who had been killed in the war. I hope this is a reasonable explanation.

Levith’s essay is far more interesting, and more detailed, than the summary I have provided above. It makes for thoughtful reading.

philosopher Monroe Beardsley / cubistic camouflage

decanter and goblet / Monroe Beardsley

Monroe C. Beardsley, Aesthetics: Problems in the Philosophy of Criticism. NY: Harcourt Brace and World, 1958, pp. 95-96—

A line that turns upon itself so that its ends are fused, and is therefore endless, defines a figure, or what is often called a form. It may be a continuous, unbroken, line-area— that is, an outline— or a circular row of dots, or a group of sketchy line-areas that fuse into a broken line and make a triangle, a pitcher-shape, or an elephant-shape. Consider, for a moment, a square, each of whose sides is a line-area. It does not matter much whether you call this outline a single line, or say that it consists of four lines, one for each side. If we speak in the latter way, we shall want to say that when two lines—as any two sides—fuse together in such a way that they both become parts of a single figure, then they “go with” each other. Line X goes with line Y when they are parts of the same figure.

To explore this concept a little further, we may consider the multiple relevance of lines—a phenomenon much exploited in modern nonrepresentational painting, but one that also throws light upon principles that have always been important in painting. Suppose we draw a large goblet bulging at the top, and a small decanter bulging at the bottom, in such a way that the same line-area serves as the right-hand side of the goblet and as the left-hand side of the decanter. This line belongs to two distinct figures at the same time, or, in other words, goes with two distinct sets of lines. It binds the two figures in a particularly intimate way, by guiding the eye from any point on the outline of either figure continuously to any point on the outline of the other. It is interesting to distinguish varying degrees of intimacy in the connection between two figures, depending upon the connections of their outlines. (1) The figures may be entirely separated as in Italian primitive painting. (2) There may be a broken line that goes from one to another, as in a painting by Rubens or El Greco, where the line of one figure’s leg or back will be picked up by the arm or side of another figure. (3) The same line may belong to both figures, as in the decanter-goblet example, or in paintings by Ozenfant, Gris, Braque, or Picasso in one period—see his Seated Woman (1927)…. (4) There may be strong lines that cut across both figures, throwing their actual outlines into the background, so that in fact the figures are actually submerged and tend to lose their character as figures. This is the principle of camouflage.

related observation by Gestaltist Fritz Heider

 

 

 

or is this outlandish camouflage story so much bull?

Wild West bull fight poster

Despite our enormous dislike of killing animals for sport (so-called game hunting included), we have decided to post a story about camouflage and bull fighting. It is the text of a news article from The Boston Globe (March 24, 1921, p. 13), with the headline BULL HAD ‘EM GUESSING UNTIL HE SAW HIMSELF: How Camouflage Artists Injected Yankee Pep Into Mexico’s National Sport. It reads like this—

NEW YORK—Here’s the story of a bull fight in Mexico City that you can take or leave, according to Miss Hilda Moreno, an 18-year Spanish dancer [actually Cuban-born] who arrived here today from Vera Cruz on the steamship Antonio Lopez. She vouched for the bull story, saying she sat next to three participants in it. Officers of the liner also heard about it at the Mexican seaport. 

The trio she referred to were formerly American sailors, who served in the navy during the war [WWI].

Juan Martinez, famed bull artist, had engaged to slay five bulls for the entertainment of the populace. Miss Moreno had never seen a bull fight; neither had the sailors.

Three bulls were killed with great ease, when the American voiced their disapproval, declaring the animals had no chance. The manager of the show heard their remarks and inquired sarcastically if they could propose anything to add to the excitement. They put their heads together and asked permission to handle a bull. The fifth one was assigned to them, while the fourth went to its death.

In the Navy the sailors had been detailed to the camouflage division and had become proficent in that art. They got paint and went to work on the bull. They painted a face and horns on the wrong end, so that it was difficult to tell which way the animal was heading. When it entered the arena on the run, matadors and toreador were up against it. The bull was all over the place, so far as they could see. The audience howled its approval.

But the bull had a bush of hair as the end of its tail which the sailors had painted red. On one of the turns the animal spied the red and went after it. The result was it spun around until it dropped, to the relief of its antagonists.

Miss Moreno is not going to appear here and has no press agent. She is going to Spain to fill a contract at the Queen’s Theatre in Madrid.

dazzle-camouflaged ship departs from French port

Above Dazzle camouflage scheme applied to a World War I-era American ship (possibly a hospital ship), departing from a French port (c1918). 

•••

Albert Gleaves, A History of the Transport Service. New York: George H. Doran, 1921, pp. 82-83—

[During World War I] Wide use was made of camouflage painting of hulls and exterior fittings of all types of ships, to confuse the enemy in estimating the course, speed and size of his quarry.

For a long time, it was generally thought that camouflage acted like the invisible cloak of the knight in the fairy tale, which of course it didn’t.

There were various styles of camouflage just as there were different kinds of zigzag [steering]. Some camouflaging was so effective that the course of the ship was disguised as much as 90 degrees. Once an officer of the deck reported that a ship had been sighted heading directly across his bow, when as a matter of fact she was going in the same direction.

Any one living in New York City during the war had opportunity to see from Riverside Drive the various designs of camouflage. Some of these were fantastic, but the majority were known as the “dazzle system,” which sufficiently indicates the style.

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John W.K. Berrian / Tiffany designer and camoufleur

Berrian Draft Registration

There are ten stained glass windows, made by Tiffany and Company, at the Second Reformed Church in Hackensack NJ. According to the New York Times (May 4, 1979), these were among the “favorite windows” of Lewis Comfort Tiffany, who “frequently visited there with clients…”

The windows are well-known and admired. But what is all but unknown is that most of them were designed by long-term Tiffany designer John William Ketcham Berrian (1877-1953), who is also sometimes listed as John W.K. Berrian and John Ketcham Berrian. 

Born in New York, he designed and installed stained glass windows for Tiffany for thirty-five years. When Tiffany died in 1933, Berrian continued to work with the firm until the mid-1940s, at which time he “withdrew hs connections” and “went into business by himself.” Berrian died on February 25, 1953. In anticipation of that, he had arranged for his funeral to be held in the Second Reformed Church in Hackensack. The church’s tenth window, which he had designed, was installed a few weeks later.

Of additional interest is that Berrian also served as a ship camouflage designer for the US Shipping Board during World War I. We know this from three sources: In an obituary in the Bergen Evening Record, it was noted that he had served as a civilian wartime camoufleur, for which “he created designs and effects for the camouflage of warships and transports.”

That is also confirmed by his draft registration card, dated September 12, 1918, in which his occupation is listed as a camoufleur for the US Shipping Board. In that capacity, he worked for William Andrew Mackay, which is confirmed by the inclusion of his name on a list of Mackay’s associates at 345 East 33rd Street in Manhattan.

Sources
"John Berrian Rites Slated In Second Reformed Church: One Of Country’s Foremost Designers, Builders Of Stained Glass Windows, Dies In Hospital" in Bergen Evening Record (Hackensack NJ), February 26, 1953, p. 2.

"Tenth Window To Be Shown At Reformed Church Sunday: Berrian’s Best To Be Unveiled, Dedicated At Special Service; Blends With Other Nine" in Bergen Evening Record, May 13, 1953.

John Ketcham Berrian / Stained Glass Wndow (detail)

 

free online sources of camouflage-related research

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germ strainer, natural mask & checkered camouflage

Above World War I railway mounted artillery, with checkerboard-patterned camouflage. Source unknown.

•••

It was in 1918 that the great “Spanish flu” epidemic arrived. As with our own recent experience, there were frenzied efforts to find a cure, or at least to find reliable ways of preventing it from spreading. In the article that follows, it was recommended that one way to protect oneself (at least for men) was to grow a moustache, which might then partly function as a germ strainer, a natural mask and camouflage.

HIRSUTE VEIL CAMOUFLAGE IS FLU GERM DUPE in Salt Lake Herald-Republican, December 125, 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 colendar.

If the moustache or whiskers prove to be real preventives, lots of Salt Lake men who pine to retire from an ailing world will take the hirsute veil. Faces which have been displayed merely as faces may take on the display 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 pass. 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 caravansarles 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

disruptive rattlesnake camouflage / to be discontinued

Magazine ad for Vulcabeston (1919)

ZEBRA STRIPES OFF CHOW CARTS: Solid Colors Will Replace Rattlesnake Trimmings to Economize Paint. Stars and Stripes (Paris, France), June 28, 1918, p. 3—

Zebra stripes on chow carts are to be a thing of the past for some time anyway.

The powers-that-be have come to the conclusion that “the effectiveness of this painting is very slight,” and one of the most overworked words in the language is going to have a little rest. You guessed it: Camouflage.

Solid, dull colors are to replace the rattlesnake patterns in future, it is announced, since it has been proven that they melt into the atmosphere pretty nearly as well as do the more motley contraptions, sometimes better.

Furthermore, all requests for camouflage by organizations in a division are henceforth to be shot up to the division engineer, who will put his camouflage officer on the job and see what kind of concealment will be most effective.

Not that the new regulations will put the camouflage corps out of work. It will probably have to work all the harder. The reason for the changes, and the curtailing of gaudiness, may be summed up in just these words: Economize paint.

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

 

camouflage / his master looks exactly like our egg man

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

•••

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.

•••

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!"