the debate about who originated WWI camouflage

Above World War I photograph (c1914) of four members of the French camouflage squad described in the news article below. They are (l to r) Èugene Jean-Baptiste Corbin, Louis Guingot, Henri Royer, and (seated in front) Henri Ronsin. If this article is accurate, Corbin may have been the first of the French camoufleurs to experiment not only with field camouflage, but with naval camouflage as well. Confusingly, it is often said that the originator of French camouflage was Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scévola who apparently arrived at the same idea, independently of Corbin. Combining their findings, they became a single team, but it was Guirand de Scévola who managed the first camouflage workshop at Toule, and who persuaded the French command to establish a section de camouflage.

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HONOR INVENTOR OF CAMOUFLAGE: French Officials Recognize Genius of Eugene Corbin Who Aided World War in The Portsmouth Times (Portsmouth OH), October 6, 1935, p. 12—

Paris, Oct. 5—Eugene Corbin, inventor of the system of camouflage used in the World War, finally has received recognition from the French government for his work.

In August 1914, Corbin, now 65 years old and the weathy director of a big department store chain, was mobilized as a noncommissioned officer. Three days after he reached the front the idea of putting war materials in “disguise” came to him. It was later adopted by all the allied and enemy armies and became one of the most striking characteristics of the World War.

One day, as Corbin tells it, he learned that three of his friends were blown to pieces by an airplane bomb while manning a field gun. He remembered that years before he had experimented with many-colored costumes while hunting so as not to scare away animals. He thought the scheme might work to disguise field guns from enemy planes and his colonel gave him permission to experiment.

Corbin first rounded up a squad to help him. Louis Guingot, a prominent portrait painter, and Henri Ronsin, decorator of the Paris Opera were his first aids. Together they painted the first canvas to hide a field gun and its gunners from German planes. They were given an automobile and complete painting equipment plus the use of a vacant department store in Toul. Soon their staff grew and idle factories throughout France were opened to pratictioners in the new science of camouflage. The first design never varied throughout the war.

Corbin directed painting of the first warship and first transport, examples of camouflage which were to become familiar to American citizens throughout the war. His invention was applied to everything used in army and navy life, from guns, hangars, tanks to armored cars, trucks and railroad cars.

Corbin has been active throughout his life in the interests of what he calls “real art,” apart from the crude system of painting that he originated. For some years he has supported a colony of artists and sculptors in his native Lorraine and his private art collection numbers more than 10,000 objects which he has collected for 35 years.

Èugene Jean-Baptiste Corbin