WWI British camouflaged ship in Southhampton water

Geoffrey S. Allfree (1918)

On pages 88-89 of James Taylor’s book, Dazzle: Disguise and disruption in war and art (Pool of London, 2016), on a facing full-page spread, there is a striking reproduction of a painting of a dazzle-painted British ship, A dazzled oiler with escort (1918), by Geoffrey S. Allfree (1889-1918). He was not a camouflage artist per se, but was commissioned during World War I by the Imperial War Museum to document wartime subjects. 

Of those paintings, my own favorite is a watercolor on paper (shown above), titled Camouflaged ship in Southhampton water (1917). As can be skillfully achieved in watercolor, there is a freshness and immediacy that makes it seem to have come about with all but little effort.

During the war, Allfree was a Lieutenant in the Royal Naval Vounteer Reserve. He died at sea on September 29, 1918, at age 29. Earlier in the same year, he had been designated as the official painter for the Royal Navy. He is the grandfather of composer, musicologist, and scholar Joscelyn Godwin, Professor of Music Emeritus at Colgate University.