camouflage as a less hazardous wartime assignment

US wartime camouflage in France, 1918

It is no surprise to learn that, in both world wars, draft eligible men in the US were apprehensive about the hazards of serving. A good number of them, maybe most, made an effort to be assigned to service roles that were less hazardous than serving as infantry in the trenches. Others, who had worked in civilian life in specialized vocations, were well-advised to look for ways to serve in the military equivalent of those same vocations.

Understandably, in World War I, when the formation was announced of an American Camouflage Corps, and artists were encouraged to apply, applications flooded in. 

We thought about this recently when we ran across a reference in the preface (by Anne Wintermute Lane) to The Letters of Franklin K. Lane (1864-1921) (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 1922), who served in the US Government when Woodrow Wilson was in office. In the preface, the author recalls that an initial difficulty in editing Lane's correspondence was that it took weeks to find and set aside "just the requests for patronage, for commissions, passports, appointments as chaplains, promotions, demands from artists who desired to work on camouflage…[and so on]."

RELATED LINKS 

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

William Twigg Smith / New Zealand-born Camoufleur

In earlier blog posts we’ve talked about a New Zealand-born artist, named William Twigg-Smith (1882-1950) who was one of the first members of the American Camouflage Corps during World War I. Through online searches of vintage newspapers, it’s not difficult to find quite a few articles about him. Among the most thorough is a lengthy full page article by Mike Jay titled Twigg Smith Camoufleur: Camouflage Saved France from the Huns, which was published on page 1 of the Magazine Section of the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (July 12, 1919). An image of the article (not readable obviously) is reproduced above, and the article’s full text is as follows—

•••

Art for art's sake and camouflage for land's sake!

Camouflage saved the land of France, held the ground time and time again in the big German advances. Without it the gun positions would have been more readily detected by the enemy and progress of the Huns would have been more rapid and swift and perhaps might have fully succeeded. By the time the United States entered the war, France and the French troops knew full well the great life and land value of camouflage.

But to the American officers making their first appearance on the firing line "over there"—well!

"Suffering cats and blue blazes! We're here to fight, not hide! Whadda we want with that old stuff?"

That's the way they talked at the beginning. Then came the first mild shower of shells from an unknown and unseen source miles away and brought them around in double quick time with a request for all that "old stuff" such as wire, nets, burlap, screens, twigs and other material that goes to make up camouflage.

Later on, when these selfsame officers had endured it hot and heavy, their tendency was to swing too far into the other direction and to burrow into the ground for concealment of their guns with the camouflage section of the Fortieth Engineers, AEF.

Though born In Nelson, New Zealand, Smith was to all intents and purposes an American long before he secured his naturalization papers while in France on service for Uncle Sam. He was a student at art schools in San Francisco, Chicago and New York and had visited Honolulu eight or nine times before his start for France in 1917.

He landed on French soil on January 7, 1918, and was sent almost directly to the front. He remained at the front until within three days of the signing of the armistice, when he was ordered to an officers' training camp.

"Talk about trouble, I guess we had ours, all right," he remarks on the subject of camouflage for the American guns In France.

"After experimenting for many weary months with color schemes, different systems of coverings, various styles of screens and other stuff, the American camoufleurs finally decided upon a plan that worked to perfection. Not only could the gun position be hidden from ground observers but so well was the plan worked out that it was absolutely impossible to detect such a position even by photographs from the air.

"The French system of camouflage was on the burrow style with a little opening forward for the gun. The top was screened and carried twigs and other material to give it the appearance of the ground.

"That was fine so long as there was no aerial observation. But a photograph taken from an airplane immediately detected the shadows cast by the hump of the mound and the first thing that happened was a shell In the vicinity from a Hun gun."

After trying some 40 different styles, the American camouflage section decided upon a wire screening with strips of burlap hanging down. There were large open places in the top of this netting which made some of the officers think that it was not effective. But it certainly was. These strips cast a series of mottled shadows that photographed exactly like ground would under a tree and gave it such a natural appearance that it was impossible of detection. That was camouflage carried to the highest degree.

"The color scheme entered into this as well. The French had worked that out nicely. We practically used their systems of mottled colors for varied conditions. But the system of shadow casting was entirely our own.

"There was considerable difference in the systems of keeping up the camouflage work also. The English maintained 'dumps' all along their sectors and issued a catalogue of the various kinds of camouflage in store. When request for a certain kind was made a pamphlet of printed directions was sent up with the material of any point on the front. It was then up to the gunners themselves to put the camouflage in place.

"The French also maintained 'dumps' and their camouflage section would give word-of-mouth advice together with a lot of artistic terms as to the manner of placing it. They were strong on watching the color schemes. The artillerymen had to put up their own camouflage, however.

"The Americans on the other hand aimed to have men aways on the front. These men would issue from the 'dumps' and wherever possible herd a gang of trained workers with each division to attend to supervision of concealing a battery. Inspections were made daily to see that discipline was carried out. The camouflage section always had the last word In the matter. If it was negative to movements on dangerous grounds its word was followed. It it was agreeable then the rest of the authorities could thresh it out.

"The older officers, especially those who had served with the British and French troops before coming into the United States army, recognized the worth of camouflage without question and strictIy enforced the orders of the deception division. Just to give an idea, here's a case in point.

"In a position near Bois Chanot, in the vicinity of Beaumont, there was a light fall of snow one morning. The camouflage section immediately requested no movements in order to keep from making tracks to battery position. Orders were issued by the commanding officer of the battery to shoot anyone attempting to get off the paths wired out by the camouflage section.

"General Summeral of the 1st Division was a great crank on camouflage. He learned by bitter experience. He thought it 'all bunk' at first, but later issued orders that no camouflage be attempted without advice and direction of the camouflage section.

"One of the favorite tricks at the front was to use a position a great deal for a few nights and then move out, at the same time keeping up appearances of activity. A fire at times to make a lot of smoke. This would draw the fire and detract the enemy attention from a new position a few hundred yards to the right or left of the old.

"On the other hand some of the artillery officers seemed to think that anything sent out by the camouflage section was endowed with magic powers of concealment. Without any reference as to its fitness in the natural scheme they would drape the material over the ammunition guns in such a manner that if anything it made the position more conspicuous. And they would be well satisfied with the job until a camouflage section man came along to rave and tear his hair and straighten the thing out.

"The camouflage section was composed of artists, sculptors, house painters, marble workers, tile layers, bricklayers, builders, carpenters and if I remember right we even had a former parson one section. They were all trained at the school conducted back of the lines before, they went to the front to work. Some of them proved grand little camoufleurs, too.
"One stunt that was started by our section and taken up with avidity was that of laying temporary camouflage for guns on the march when making a short halt. The first thing gunners were ordered to do at a halt was to cut branches and arrange them over the field pieces. This saved many a gun from a sad fate. The gunners could always find room beneath the canopy of branches in times of stress."

Twigg Smith brought back with him from France a big collection of photographs of camouflage work, some of which are published today for the first time. These are unique pictures in that they show actual work done by the camoufleurs to protect guns, screen roads and conceal movement of either guns or troops.

•••

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

Edwin Howland Blashfield / was he a ship camoufleur

Edwin Howland Blashfield

During his life time, American artist Edwin Howland Blashfield (1848-1936) was typically referred to as “the dean of American muralists.” 

We have mentioned him twice in earlier blog posts, because of his connection to the American Camouflage Corps, a civilian camouflage group that was initiated in 1917 by muralist Barry Faulkner and sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry. But if he had any involvement in ship camouflage, we were not aware of that.

Here’s what we found: In an obituary in The Quincy Evening News (Quincy MA) on October 13, 1936, an article titled CAMOUFLAGER OF WARSHIPS DIES AT CAPE SUMMER HOME stated that Blashfield was “in charge of camouflaging US vessels during the World War.”

The article goes on to claim that “On the advice of President Wilson, the war department in 1917 placed Blashfield in charge of camouflaging American ships traversing the submarine zones. Blashfield was awarded the Legion of Honor medal by the French government.” 

Really? That’s amazing. In fifty-five years of researching and writing about ship camouflage, we don't recall any other mention of Edwin Blashfield in connection to ship camouflage? Additional digging may be in store.

This is what we knew before: that Faulkner and Fry “were the prime movers in the American camouflage. They enlisted the aid of others—Walter Hale, Edwin Blashfield, J. Alden Weir and men of similar distinction and called a meeting…Mr. Blashfield was made chairman and Mr. Fry secretary. The Washington was notified, and an appreciative letter returned from the office of the Chief of Staff.”

Beyond his elusive connection to wartime camouflage, Blashfield was primarily known as one of the country's leading muralists. In 1893 in Chicago, he designed the dome of one of the buildings at the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. H also painted the murals on the central dome of the Main Reading Room at the Library of Congress.

Blashfield mural in Iowa State Capitol [detail]

In 1915, he created a large mural (see detail below), titled Westward (14 feet high by 40 feet wide), in the State Capitol of Iowa that was intended to portray Manifest Destiny. It was, in Blashfield’s words, “a symbolical presentation of the Pioneers led by the spirits of Civilization and Enlightenment to the conquest by cultivation of the Great West.” There may be few better phrases than “conquest by cultivation” to describe the fate of indigenous wildlife and peoples, and the on-going current decline of the region’s livability, not by armed raids but by poisons.

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

Homer St. Gaudens as drawn by Gordon Stevenson

Above Cover of TIME magazine (May 12, 1924), featuring a portrait of Homer St. Gaudens (son of the celebrated sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens), who was in charge of US Army camouflage during both World Wars. It is of additional interest that this pencil-drawn portrait of St Gaudens was made by artist Gordon Stevenson, who served as a ship camoufleur with the US Navy during WWI.

•••

War diary of John Lee McElroy, 1st Lieut. 315th Field Artillery, 155th Brigade. Camden, N.J: Haddon Press, c1929, p. 8—

This afternoon I had fallen asleep while studying a map. My head had sunk down on my arms on the table, and I was aroused by someone shaking me by the shoulder. He was a very good looking Major, and said I evidently had not been to sleep for some time. I admitted it. Said he wanted to inspect my camouflage, as he was camouflage officer for the sector. His name is Homer St. Gaudens. 

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

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.

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.

camouflage application / women's limited capabilities

Above This an oddity, to be sure. I'm uncertain where I found it, but I do know that the original photograph (grayscale only, but misleadingly AI-colorized here) was published in The American Machinest (c1918), with the photo caption of "The finished product—American made gun and tractor—Detroit, Mich." The original image is an elongated horizontal, but, in order to show it in detail here, I have sliced it into three parts and stacked the sections. The article which it illustrates describes the process by which the camouflage design was applied to the tractor, which had been driven into a "camouflage room," where it was initially assumed that only men (not women) would be capable of painting the pattern. The article goes on to say—

Here a process never before used was applied. Paint guns had been used for the two coats of olive drab, but it did not stop at that point. One man marked off the camouflage design with chalk and marked each recess with the numbers 1, 2 or 3, number 1 being green, number 2 buff, and number 3 yellow. Each painter was given a number—1, 2 or 3.  Number 1, using green paint, painted every place on the tractor that was marked 1, while number 2, using buff, filled in every place marked 2, and 3 proceeded in like manner. After the first few tractors had been run through in this manner, it was found that women could do this work as well as men, and women were hired, relieving the men for heavier work. The black striping was done by a man at the end of the paint line. The total time required for assembling armor, tool box and camouflaging was one hour.

Henry Miller on Abraham Rattner as WWI camoufleur

Abraham Rattner and Henry Miller (c1930)

Henry Miller, Remember to Remember. New York: New Directions, 1947, p. 55—

It was in the second battle of the Marne, at Chateau Thierry, while directing the camouflage operations of the 75’s, that [American artist Abraham] Rattner was rendered hors de combat by a concussion which sent him flying into a shell hole. The injury to his back which he then received he still suffers from. Transferred to Camp [de] Souge (near Bordeaux) he took charge of the School of Camouflage which had just been started. All the camouflage work undertaken at the front, and at the experimental field near Nancy, had to do with the utter absence of paint and painted color shapes (known as dazzle painting). His job was to construct actual concealments, structures made of poles, chickenwire netting, garlands of tinted burlap, trees, mud, plants, dummy cannons, and so on. Dazzle painting proved to be too limited a form of deception, ineffective because it did not conceal the basic structural shadow forms. The basis of camouflage was to fool the camera’s eye. 

I mention this phase of his [Rattner’s] war experience because, studying some of his earlier work, I had naively concluded that elements of the camouflage technique had crept into his painting. A quality which I often described as “flou” made these canvases contrast sharply with his later work in which the structural element is prominent. It was perhaps the prepossession with disturbing and often dislocating effects of light and shade which created the association. I am particularly fond of the work of this period in which it seems that his watery nature gains the ascendance, for Rattner is a strange mixture of fire and water. In these canvases the human figure blends with the patterns of nature in a sort of shadowy, translucent marine-scape.…

fires in American camouflage section buildings in WWI

Moulin de la Galette, Paris

GASOLINE EXPLODES IN CAMOUFLAGE SCHOOL in Seward Gateway Daily Edition (Seward AK), February 2, 1918, p. 4—

PARIS, Feb. 2—A gasoline can exploded this morning as some American soldiers were filling an automobile tank at the famous Moulin de la Galette dancing hall [as pictured above], now used as a camouflage school for the American army. The tank also exploded and two American soldiers were seriously wounded.

•••

OFFICIAL PAPERS BURNED Mice and Matches Blamed for Fire in Washington, in Indianapolis News (Indianapolis IN), April 6, 1918, p. 9—

WASHINGTON, April 6—Fire of unknown origin last night destroyed the upper floor of a building near the great State, War and Navy Building [as pictured below], occupied by the Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair and the Camouflage Section. Some supplies and papers were burned, but the damage is said to be insignificant.

No one was in the building except a watchman, who thought the flames started in a piles of papers beneath a stairway, and that mice and matches probably were responsible.

State, War and Navy Building, Washington DC

lamb[l]ast / a lone wolf in snow-covered surroundings

WWII Finnish troops in snow-covered surrounding

There is a wartime Boston news report (December 1944) which features an American artist named Nathaniel J[udah] Jacobson (1916-1996), who was a US Army camoufleur. Originally from Boston, he had studied painting at the School of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, MIT, and at Yale University, where he earned a BFA degree in 1941.

When the US entered World War II at the end of 1941, Jacobson enlisted. In 1944, while stationed in Europe, he was a contributor to the development of white cape coverings for infantry in snow-covered surroundings on the border of Belgium and Germany.

His involvement in all this was reported in the Boston Globe on December 14, 1944, in an article with the headline BOSTON ARTIST AIDS IN SAVING GIS BY SLICK CAMOUFLAGE WORK (pp. 1-2), in which Jacobson is described as being the “boss of fifty Belgian girls as a factory supervisor in a First Army camouflage unit.”

While encamped in the Hurtgen Forest, the American infantry was unprepared for the sudden first snowfall, which left them “unduly exposed to enemy fire against the white background…” As a result, "camouflage engineers were called and given seven days to produce. It meant seven days in which to design, obtain materials, obtain labor and manufacture concealing [white] snow capes for all frontline troops.” Within 24 hours, a factory had been set up, laborers had been hired, and thread and muslin were flown in. “Within 36 hours the first snow cape was rattled off the production line.”

As for Private Jacobson, his “part of the job was training the help, mostly Belgian girls, ironing out the production bottlenecks, and [in] general speeding up” the process. “He did this job with such good effect that by the end of the fifth day—two days ahead of schedule—the much-needed capes were on their way to the boys whose lives depended on them.”

…”Factory jobs are curiously incongruous for many of the men of this battalion, which comprises in addition to the Boston artist [Jacobsen], landscape artisans, cameramen, advertising layout men and former movie directors. Incidently, they camouflaged [the insulated clothing of this correspondent (reporter Iris Carpenter)] against pneumonia—she hopes—a sheepskin coat which they have spotched brown and olive on the skin side. If snow falls she will wear the wool side out and risk observation by nothing more dangerous than the GIs.“

•••

One week after that article was published, a second news report (written by Hal Boyle) appeared in the Times-Mirror (Warren PA), in which Private First Class Jacobson (apparently newly promoted) is described as “discontented” with his job, and is quoted very candidly. According to him, “I got this job—which I don’t like—because I had picked up some French out of a phrase book and was able to tell the girls what we wanted done.”

“I never even worked in a clothing factory before—never wanted to,” he adds. “…And here I am running one. You sure do strange things in the Army.”

The young Belgian women he supervises, he continued, “…are just like American girls. They never stop talking. And the way they spend their money! One girls just paid 900 francs for a pair of shoes—three weeks salary for one pair of shoes!

They have been going to some American army dances. That’s what they talk about most all day long. They are envious of American girls because they heard American girls could go to dances alone. Here, even if she is 25 years old, a girl can’t go to a dance unless her parents come along, too.”

Looking “moodily” at “the happy humming girls” in his workforce, Jacobson explains: “I am a happily married man—this is no place for me. They should put a single man on this job. But I guess that’s why they put me here—because I am an old married man—and not a wolf.”

In contrast, his asistant and co-worker, Private Donavan Mccomber from Radcliff OH, glanced over the factory workroom, whistled cheerfully, and said:

“Well, so we got to work in a roomful of girls. It ain’t so bad. I can think of a lot worse ways to win the war.”

•••

Following the war, Jacobson returned to the Boston area, became a research associate at MIT, and embarked on long-term art-and-science color research, including responses to color, and computer modeling. He continued to paint and exhibit, and, in 1975, published a book on color, titled The Sense of Color: A Portfolio in Visuals (Van Nostrand Reinhold).

American Impressionism / Provincetown Camouflage

Below Photograph (c1919) of American artist George Elmer Browne (1871-1946), a Massachusetts-based painter who studied at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and at the Academie Julian in Paris. He was associated with American Impressionists, such as Edmund Tarbell, Frank W. Benson, and Joseph DeCamp. Reproduced above is one of his finest impressionist paintings (Harbor Scene with Fishing Boats, 1910, Smithsonian American Art Museum). Born in Gloucester MA, around 1918 he acquired 162 Commercial Street in Provincetown, which served as his studio and the West End School of Art. Detailed information can be found online here and here.

In the following news article, it is claimed that Browne had been involved in “camouflage work” for the US Government during World War I, presumably as a civilian, and most likely in connection with ship camouflage.

•••

CAMOUFLAGE FOR UGLY STANDPIPE TO CHANGE IT TO A THING OF BEAUTY Noted Provincetown Artist Evolves Own Ingenious Plan For Eliminating Unpleasantness From Landscape, in Boston Globe, November 4, 1931—

PROVINCETOWN, Nov 3—Fastidious about its landscape since it has become an art center, Provincetown will have what is thought to be the first camouflaged standpipe in the United States.

Thanks to the initiative and ingenuity of George Elmer Browne, famous artist, the town's new standpipe, instead of being painted black like the old one, will receive a tricky blend of colors, which will render it almost invisible.

The sand dune on which the standpipe is built will melt into the base of the iron structure, as will the shrubery and foliage; then the color will blend upwards into sky tones and cloud tones, so that instead of an eyesore crowning the landscape, a very necessary object will be so painted that it will appear as a thing of beauty.

According to artist Browne, the standpipe will be invisible except when it stands out against the sun, and even then it will not be a very bold silhouette.

At the present time, two standpipes occupy the hill, but the old one, long an eyesore, marring the view of the town from the harbor and detracting from the grandeur of tie towering Pilgrim Monument on Town Hill, will soon come down.

Mr Browne’s studio commands an unobstructed view of the hill of the standpipes. When the new and larger one went up, he began to study the problem of avoiding the uglification.

Having done camouflage work for the Government during the war, he devised his color scheme and presented it to the Town Water Commissioners, with designs worked out in oil.

The artist, at their request, then presented the Commissioners with a scale model of the pipe, from which areas to be colored could be figured.

In coloring the big standpipe. the painters will work from a small sheet iron model. The model is now in the hands of the contractors.

camouflage ball at Willard Hotel and Lincoln's slippers

President Lincoln's bedroom slippers

Above Bedroom shoes given by Abraham Lincoln to the proprietor of the famous Willard Hotel in Washington DC. These are the slippers that Lincoln wore when he stayed at that hotel during his inaugural. Photograph by Carol M. Highsmith, c1985. Image courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Collection online here.

In March 1918, the two ballrooms at the Willard Hotel were transformed by members of the American Camouflage Corps, stationed at American University Camp, in preparation for a fundraising Camouflage Ball, to be held on Wednesday evening, March 6. 

The hotel’s large ballroom was given the appearance of “a quaint French village,” while the smaller one became a “sunny street in Italy.” The artists who designed all this were “past masters in the art of scene painting. When they get to France [to serve as wartime camoufleurs] they will fool [the enemy] into believing there are things where they aren’t but just at present they’re busy in making the Willard ballroom look like anything but a ballroom.”

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ENGLISH FACTORY GIRLS CAMOUFLAGE SHOES in Los Angeles Evening Express, January 2, 1918—

London, Jan. 2—Girl workers in the danger buildings at Woolwich arsenal are not allowed to wear jewelry. They have therefore hit on the idea of wearing colored shoe laces.

The Cap Shop girls appeared one morning with bright emerald green ribbons on their shoes, much to the envy of other departments. The next morning the whole factory was in the fashion, says the principal supervisor.

Shoes were tied with blue, pink, red, white ribbons; with anything but the government boot lace of untanned leather. The fashion spread to the office and women clerks paraded the platform during the dinner hour with resplendent shoe laces.

French Women Employed Making Camouflage Nets

MAKING CAMOUFLAGE SCREENS. French Women are Employed in Making Nets for Disguising Gun Positions, in The Watchman and Southron (Sumter SC). October 16, 1918—

Behind American lines somewhere in France. Seven hundred French women are employed in the American Camouflage station here making nets to screen from observation American batteries and machine gun sections. There was a burst of patriotic song as the Associated Press correspondent entered the large building where they work, for many of them sing as they sew.

The screening of artillery is the most imporant work of camouflage, as it is the main reliance in deceiving the aerial observer and camera and in preventing the enemy from locating our batteries.

For this purpose huge camouflage nets are provided of wire and fish-net, which cover the guns like a great horizontal tent. In the netting are tied bunches of green burlap, of the same color as the surrounding grass or foliage. And thus viewed from above, the overhanging green net merges the battery into the landscape of trees and turf.

Hundreds of these nets were being made by the women workers. The 75 millimeter takes an overhanging net, 30 feet square, the 165 millimeter gun has a 37 foot net, and the American machine gun gets an 18 foot net. The nets are graded inten colors of green and earth-brown, so that the shield may have the exact tint of the surrounding trees. The nets are shipped to the front in huge bundles, one for each gun.

It has been a problem to get the 700 women required for this deft work on the nets, and one of the chief means of drawing them is a Red Cross home for the babies of the married women, and a YMCA kitchen which gives them a good meal for 60 centimes (12 cents). Camouflage garlands are also made by the women. These garlands of green burlap are strung between the trees, in order to break up lines and diffuse edges so that the location of a convoy or battery will not show on an aerial photograph.

In the carpenter shop huge frames for green umbrellas were being made. The umbrellas open like an ordinary sun-shade, and camouflage a machine gun. In the blacksmith shop the men were turning out steel "cabins" which are sunk below the ground, for an observer. They have a front of bulletproof steel and are about as strong as a small safe. In one of these an observer is safe in the midst of a shower of shrapnel.

Laying on paint much as a scrub-woman wields a mop, an artist was walking about on a gigantic camouflage screen for an airplane hangar. The great piece of painting was spread on a field and covered an area of 1000 square yards. The artist was using a brush as big as a broom.

“Camouflage is making a constant battle against the aerial camera,” said the escort, "for with photographs made from airplanes the enemy gets a complete view of our positions unless they are obscured by some device of camouflage.” 

RELATED LINKS

Film of scene described above

The role of American women in WWI camouflage

Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of  WWI Ship Camouflage

Frenchmen shore is wonders with a bucket o' paint

Fletcher Chenault, “The Camel Flagger” in Collier’s Magazine (March 30, 1918), p. 24—

…“I see by the papers,” Lige was saying, “whar’bouts the Gov’ment is sendin’ over some painter fellers to Yurope to put camel flags on our army.”

“Camel what?” I inquired, puzzled. “What kind of flag is that?”

“‘Tain’t no flag a-tall, “ Lige said. “It’s a art. You take a cannon, mebbe, an’ you paint it to look like a plowbeam, so to speak, an’ a common ord’nary waggin will look like a hayrick. It’s easy ef you know how.”

WWI French Army truck camouflage

 

“Oh!” I exclaimed, a light dawning on me. “You mean camouflage.”

“No, I don’t,” Lige insisted. “I mean camel flags. It’s a French word mean’ to kiver up. Them Frenchmen shore is wonders with a bucket o’ paint or a skillet, although the only painters which I ever see was Irish an’ b’longed to a union.”

“House painters?”

“Shore—the stepladder kind. But when it comes to that, this here Lee Starr was the best camel flagger which I ever see,” Lige added reflectively. “Whensoever he got through paintin’ a thing it warn’t what you thought it was a-tall—not even hisself.”…

There is much more to know about Walt McDougall

Everglades Poster (©2018) Roy R. Behrens

American cartoonist Walt McDougall (1858-1938) was the subject of the previous post, in which we reprinted the full text of a newspaper story he wrote about his attempts to persuade the US military to adopt the use of camouflage during World War I.

As it turns out, there is much more to know about him, and part of the information is in his autobiography, titled This is the Life! (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1926). In that book (full text available online), he talks about how he became interested in protective coloration in nature when he was appointed the Game Protector of Florida, under the Migratory Bird Act. During his tenure in that role, the population of white egrets (which had been nearing extinction before) grew substantially, and manatee (then commonly known as the “sea cow”) became “more plentiful than the real cow, which is rather rare in Florida.” He goes on to describe how he also became interested in wartime camouflage—

Shortly after hostilities began in France, I encountered some badly wounded Canadian officers who had been sent South to recuperate, and often took them out boating. From them one day I learned about “camouflage” as practiced in the European armies, The prospect of this novel application of paint to warfare excited me immensely; I seemed to glimpse an opening whereby many aged artists could be of service to their country [p. 307].…

…In July I went to Washington…to preach camouflage to an incredulous and derisive lot of official dumb-bells who thought I was trying to introduce a new brand of French cheese. I was dubbed “Camouflage Walt” in the Press Club. I wrote a couple of page stories for the [Washington] Post that helped to make the word familiar, but alas, the reputation of humor is ruinous to any serious purpose; I got a few laughs but no consideration, although seven hundred French and English artists were even then engaged in developing the new defensive art. General Joe Kuhn, head of the War College, assured me it “was mere frills and piffle” [p. 308].

Aside from his camouflage efforts, there are other interesting aspects of McDougall’s life. In 1902, while he was a cartoonist for The North American in Philadelphia, a fellow cartoonist named Charles Nelan satirized the Governor of Pennsylvania (Samuel Pennypacker) by depicting him as a parrot. Rather like current political ploys, Pennypacker responded by calling for a legislative rule (called the “anti-cartoon act”) that would make it unlawful to portray politicians “as birds or animals.” In response, McDougall created new caricatures of the governer and other hacks—not as birds and animals, but as trees, vegetables, and a beer stein, as reproduced below.




Another, far more somber, aspect of McDougall’s biography took place decades later, when, destitute, forgotten, and living alone, he ended his life at age 80 by shooting himself in the head with an old pistol. This is how the story was told in HE MADE OTHERS LAUGH in the Owensboro Messenger (Owensboro KY), on March 12, 1938—

He had amused unnumbered thousands with his facile pen, helped elect one president with a masterful cartoon, been associated with another, and been employed by a third, yet when Walt McDougall came to die it was all alone and with a pistol clasped in his good right hand. At 80 the cartoonist, author and humorist found himself at the end of the road; money gone, friends forgetful. He had been dead a week, the coroner said.

…[US President Woodrow] Wilson commissioned McDougall to study camouflage in Europe and the report he made was the basis for much this country did in that direction during the early days of the war.•

With age and adversity upon him, the maker of laughs for other people turned to painting and his diary. If McDougall was quite frank with his pages they should have a worthwhile story to tell.

In other accounts of his passing, there are repeated references to his diary, but so far we haven't found it. It would be interesting to read, although assuredly painful. We have found only one published entry, described as having been one of his last. It reads—

Stove won’t work—tough times.

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• This claim seems to contradict McDougall's own account of his limited success.

RELATED LINKS 

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

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Paul Bartlett and the American Camouflage Division

Above Paul Wayland Bartlett in 1918 in Washington DC. Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Digital coloring.

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In a blog post on Frank Overton Colbert in 2018, we mentioned his connection with a widely known Beaux-Arts American painter and sculptor named Paul Wayland Bartlett. In April 1917, Bartlett co-founded a group of Washington DC artists called the American Camouflage Division.

Bartlett was the group’s chairman, while among the other members were Felix Mahony, Michel Jacobs, Glen Brown, Richard Brooks, A.G. Smith, Alexis B. Many, and J. Crozier. When the US entered World War I, this group offered to contribute their expertise in the development of camouflage. At the same time, comparable groups had also been formed in New York City (called the New York Camouflage Society or American Camouflage) and San Francisco (American Camouflage Western Division).

In an issue of The Sunday Star (Washington DC) on April 29, 1917 (Section Four, page 1), a half-page article titled WASHINGTON ARTISTS ORGANIZE A CAMOUFLAGE DIVISION reported that Bartlett had recently—

made an address before an assemblage of fellow artists, architects, sculptors, and painters to explain the possibilities of camouflage. His explanations were inspiring; so much so, in fact, that the establishment of an American association of camouflage was begun then and there.

Paul Wayland Bartlett (1865-1925) had been born in New Haven CT. He began with the advantage of professional connections, because his father was a prominent sculptor, Truman H. Bartlett (1835-1922), who taught modeling for 22 years in the MIT architecture department. Both the father and the son were heavily influenced by Neo-classicism and the French Academy, and, as early as age 15, Paul Bartlett began to study sculpture in Paris.

Throughout the remainder of his life, he remained active in American art circles, but lived primarily in France. In 1914, artists serving in the French Army were the first to propose the establishment of a section de camouflage, so Bartlett’s endorsement of the "art of camouflage" was most likely encouraged in part by that.

Bartlett was known for his commissioned public sculptures, the most notable of which may be The Apothesis of Democracy, the House of Representatives pediment at the US Capitol building (as shown below). He died of blood poisoning in Paris in 1925.

The Bystander | Disguised to look like nothing at all

Above Rawley [or Hawley] Morgan, "Our Involuntary Disguises" cartoon in The Bystander, March 20, 1918, p. 613.

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Anon, Hello Buddy: Sad and Sunny Side of War (1920)—

Of late the scene painter's art—technically known as camouflage—has raised the concealment of batteries and their observation posts to the realm of the uncanny…you can now disguise anybody as anything. For instance, you can make up a battery of six-inch guns to look [like] a flock of sheep, and herd them into action browsing. Or you can dispatch a scouting party across No Man's Land dressed up as pillboxes, so that the deluded Hun, instead of opening fire with a machine gun, will merely post letters in them—valuable letters, containing military secrets. Lastly, and more important still, you can disguise yourself to look like nothing at all, and in these days of intensified artillery fire it is very seldom that nothing at all is hit.

Camouflage Artist | John Dwight Bridge

Portrait of a Lady in a Red Dress by J. Dwight Bridge (n.d.)

J(ohn) Dwight Bridge was born on December 9, 1893, in St. Louis MO, where his family was socially prominent, wealthy and influential. His ancestors had been among the founders of Washington University. Having moved from Walpole MA to St. Louis, his family “made a fortune” from the railroad and the manufacture of cast-iron stoves.

Dwight attended a prestigious private school in Pawling NY. He then went on to study art at the Art Students League in New York, where he worked with painter, muralist and interior designer Albert Herter, whose father had co-founded the Herter Brothers interior design firm in New York, and whose son was Christian Herter, Secretary of State in the Eisenhower administration.

In 1917, having returned to St. Louis, Bridge announced his intention to “give up his career in art to enter the Episcopal ministry.” But when the US entered World War I, he decided instead to enlist as a camouflage artist. In September 1918, when the US Army formed its first camouflage unit, he was among the first to enlist, along with fellow artists Barry Faulkner (Abbott H. Thayer’s cousin), Sherry E. Fry, William Twigg-Smith from Hawaii, and Everit Herter (son of Albert Herter), who had only recently married.

Appointed Sergeant Major (and soon after First Lieutenant), Bridge was the highest-ranking non-commissioned officer of the group. He shared a tent with the unit’s leading commissioned officer, Lieutenant Homer Saint-Gaudens, the son of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the celebrated American sculptor. After months of training at Camp American University in Washington DC, the camouflage unit (officially known as Company A of the 40th Engineers) departed for France at the end of December 1918. In the subsequent months at the front, two members of the unit died in action, including Everit Herter, who was killed at Chateau-Thierry. Following the war, Bridge lived in Paris, then resettled in New York.

In 1918, five weeks before her husband's death, Everit Herter's wife had given birth to a son named Everit Herter Jr., who never saw his father. Around 1920, Dwight Bridge relocated to Santa Barbara CA, where his former teacher Albert Herter had established a new permanent studio at his mother’s former estate, called El Mirasol. Bridge married Everit Herter’s widow, Caroline Keck Herter, and thus became the stepfather of Everit Herter Jr. In July 1919, the Herters’ second son, named Albert, died in Santa Barbara at the age of two years and ten months. In their early years of marriage, Dwight Bridge and Caroline Herter Bridge became parents of two of their own sons, Matthew and John Jr.

J. Dwight Bridge (c1933)

In the 1920s, Bridge’s marriage fell apart. After several years of estrangement, he and his wife obtained a divorce in 1933. At about the same time, Bridge’s father died in St Louis, and he was slated to receive an inheritance of about $100,000 (worth nearly two million dollars today). In newspaper interviews, he revealed that he would refuse to accept it, saying that “an inheritance is more of a hindrance than a help.” Instead, he gave the money to his former wife and their children, and announced that henceforth he would survive as what he called a “vagabond” or “hobo”  artist.

He decided to hitchhike somewhat aimlessly around the country (his travels would take him as far as Japan and China) all the time earning his living by painting portraits. Carrying few possessions and almost no money, he began his trek in Salina KS, “the geological center of the United States.” According to a 1933 newspaper story (of which there were many, since his story was rightly regarded as odd, even bizarre), having arrived at Salina at 9:30 in the evening, he “laid all his money—30 cents—and his half-filled package of cigarettes down on the station platform, buried his wedding ring and, although it was night, immediately began a search for employment. He was 40 years old.” He was allowed to sleep in jail that night, and, in the morning, began to hitchhike west, earning his meals and lodging by various means. He was, he explained to reporters, “a man from the East, without any funds, a painter who could whitewash fences and paint doors, portraits or murals.”

The news stories bore fruit. After trading pencil portraits of meals, he was soon receiving commissions for portrait painting. The first was for $200, but he gradually raised the price to $500. On his trip to Japan, where he had eight commissions, he stopped over in Hawaii to see his former fellow camoufleur, William Twigg-Smith, whose relatives owned the newspaper there. From Hawaii, he flew back to the US mainland, then resettled in New York, while also continuing to travel around, from city to city, painting portraits of the rich in Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Dayton OH, San Francisco, Palm Beach, Colorado Springs, and elsewhere.

In a 1946 article in the Palm Beach Post, there is a pencil portrait of US Navy Captain Martin L. Marquette, who was then the commanding officer of the Naval Special Hospital (about to be closed) in Palm Beach. The drawing, the article explains, “is the work of J. Dwight Bridge, portrait artist and veteran of both World War I and II, to whom the closing of the hospital will signal a return to civilian life. During the past few months, while recuperating at the hospital, Mr. Bridge as part of his rehabilitation work has got his hand back in sketching by doing 90 portraits of the staff and patients at the hospital...During the war [WWII] he engaged in camouflage work in the AAF [Army Air Force] along similar lines he followed for the engineers in the previous war.”

Three years earlier, one of the Bridges’ sons, John Dwight Bridge Jr, (born 1920), had been killed in action while serving with the US Navy in the Mediterranean.

John Dwight Bridge Sr. died in Palm Beach FL on October 22, 1974.

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Sources

Evelyn Burke, “‘Hobo Artist’ Paints Society Folk But He Doesn’t Like Money” in Pittsburgh Press, May 2, 1935.

“Capt. M.L. Marquette” in Palm Beach Post (Palm Beach FL), February 3, 1946.

Helen Clanton, “Hitch-Hiking as a Form of Service” in St. Louis Globe Democrat, January 13, 1936.

“Noted Artist Says Fighting Elements Provides More Thrills Than Many Sports” in Dayton Daily News (Dayton OH), April 15, 1936.

“St. Louisan in Camouflage Unit of US Army Home” In St. Louis Post-Dispatch, February 15, 1919, p. 5.

“St. Louisan Who Paid Way Around World as Painter and Portrait He Made” in St. Louis Post-Dispatch, December 19, 1933.

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SEE ALSO

Nature, Art, and Camouflage (35 min. video talk)

Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage (29 min. video talk)

Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk)

Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage (28 min. video talk)