ship camoufleurs George Musaphia / B.R. Campbell

George Musaphia illustrations

I know almost nothing about an American illustrator named George Musaphia. The little that I do know I found in a brief news article in the Spokane Chronicle (October 7, 1918), which reads as follows—

RECORD CLAIMED BY CAMOFLEURS Two Seattle "camofleurs"—the men who paint the zig-zag stripes on ships returned recently from Portland OR, where they spent six days supervising the camouflaging of six vessels being built for the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The total of six ships in six days is believed a camouflaging record.

The two are George Misaphia [sic], formerly a New York portrait painter, and B.R. Campbell, who, in peace times, is a Boston theatrical scenery decorator.

That's it. I've searched for both artists, Musaphia (not Misaphia, unless I'm mistaken) and Campbell, the latter of whom is possibly a New England artist named Brooks R. Campbell (1898-1977), who worked as a sign painter in Manhattan. It seems likely that the other man was George (or Georges) Musaphia (1894-1979), but I could be wrong.

One thing about Musaphia that seems certain is that he was affiliated with the theatre, and that he worked in Boston (in advance of World War I) as an illustrator for theatre reviews. Maybe that's how he met Campbell, who is described as a "Boston theatrical scenery decorator."

The six Musaphia illustrations that I have found so far were all published in 1913. I've scanned and reproduced them here. They are stylistically consistent, but the attribution is also clear because he signed his name in an unusual way, part symbol and part letters. They were published in the Boston American on the following dates (from top to bottom) September 7, October 12 and 19, and November 2, 9 and 30. He probably was a portrait painter because his theatre illustrations are, without fail, essentially portraits of the actors as they appear in costume.

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

Troccoli's involvement in artillery camouflage in WWI

Giovanni Battista Troccoli (1882-1940) was an Italian-American painter who came to the US at age 11 in 1893. He began his career in Boston, where he worked as a wood carver at age 14, and soon after as a modeler for a well-known Boston sculptor, Hugh Cairns.

WWI artillery camouflage (Watertown Arsenal) AI Colorized

He turned from sculpture to painting, and in the process studied with Denman Ross (author of A Theory of Pure Design: Harmony, Balance, Rhythm), and with artist and frame designer Hermann Dudley Murphy, both of whom were associated with Harvard University. The latter, as explained in earlier posts, supervised the application of ship camouflage during World War I.

Troccoli also studied painting in Paris, Amsterdam and Spain, and seems to have been primarily known as a portrait painter. Of greater interest at the moment is his little-known involvement in wartime camouflage. During WWI, perhaps as a civilian, he was involved in developing camouflage patterns for American field artillery at the Watertown Arsenal, in Watertown MA. It is unconfirmed but he may have contributed to the camouflage of the field guns that are shown above and below in this post, all of which were apparently processed at Watertown.

WWI artillery camouflage (Watertown Arsenal) AI Colorized

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

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).

Gerome Brush and his memorial to Edward Thaw Jr.

Kasebier portrait of Evelyn Nesbit (1903)

Above Portrait of actress Evelyn Nesbit, made by Gertrude Kasebier (c1903), at about the time when she was allegedly seduced at Stanford White's New York architectural studio, an event that was later a factor in the shooting of White by Harry K. Thaw.

•••

Susan Wilson, Garden of Memories: A guide to historic Forest Hills. Boston: Forest Hills Educational Trust, 1998—

As you ascend [Milton Hill at Forest Hills Cemetery in Boston], you’ll see on the left one of the cemetery’s most unsual portrait sculptures. A winged, iron-clad archangel Michael stands by a beautiful young man, resting one hand on the youth’s shoulder, and another on a sword. The monument commemorates aviator Edward Thaw Jr (1908-1934) of Milton, who crashed in the mountains of New Mexico, while piloting a private plane from Quincy to San Diego.

Edward was the nephew of Harry K. Thaw, the millionaire who murdered handsome society architect Stanford White on the roof of Madison Square Garden in 1906. White’s crime was his tempestuous affair with showgirl Evelyn Nesbitt—his “Girl on the Red Velvet Swing”—prior to her marriage to Thaw. Thaw was aquitted on grounds of insanity.

Nephew Edward’s memorial at Forest Hills, commissioned by his mother, Jane Thaw, was sculpted by Gerome Brush. Son of well-known painter George DeForest Brush [and early aviator and airplane camoufleur Mittie Taylor Brush], Gerome studied art as a child in Europe [he was named in honor of French Academy painter, Jean-Leon Gerome, his father’s teacher], and was apprenticed to a Florentine marble carver. Upon returning to America, he worked on the World War I military [ship] camouflage program, and became a respected portraitist and painter, as well as an architectural and memorial sculptor.

•••

Below Roy R. Behrens, Death Announced, digital montage (2021), in which various vintage public domain graphic components have been altered and recombined. In the center background is a digitally-colored photograph of an enshrouded Evelyn Nesbit, being steadied by an assistant, as she appears in public for the first time after the death of Stanford White.

Digital montage © Roy R. Behrens 2021

Seven to seventy | Edward Simmons looking back

Edward Simmons, Girl Reading (1893)

Edward Simmons, From Seven to Seventy: Memories of a Painter and a Yankee. New York: Harpers, 1922, p. 341—

…and then came the War. I was too old to go; they even refused me in the Camouflage section, although I insist I would have been of use.

Although I was not allowed to take part in the War, my whole world changed. The color of everything—we were enmeshed in khaki. To eyes accustomed to riotous shades, this deadening of the whole tone of things was tremendously depressing… I wanted to keep step, and felt as if I were marching, marching, marching—until I would suddenly become conscious that I was only sitting still. I had never found the necessity of realizing the meaning of the old saying, “He also serves—“ For the first time I was forced to acknowledge that it was the age of the young.

Edward Simmons (date unknown)

Parades of Dazzle Camouflaged Floats

Ship Camouflage on Parade Float (c1918)

Above In the closing years of World War I, the American public's interest in camouflage (especially dazzle camouflage) was all but boundless. Examples of camouflage were included in nearly every parade, such as this float that features a dazzle-painted ship (as seen from the rear), surrounded by waves of papier maché. See also other photographs of camouflage-themed parade floats, as noted in an earlier post. We've since found descriptions of others.

•••

CITY TANK IN LOAN PARADE in The Tacoma Times (Tacoma WA), April 6, 1918, p. 8—

One of the novel features of Saturday's Liberty Parade was a miniature "tank" furnished by the city streets department. The tank was built from a new caterpillar tractor just purchased by the city. Although the caterpillar tread of the city machine does not go over the top of the body, as it does in the battle tanks, the machine was camouflaged by scenic designers so that it bore a startling resemblance to the new war terrors. It was armed with a half dozen fierce-looking guns. Commissioner [of Public Works Charles D.] Atkins announced that he would guide the city tank through the streets.

•••

CAMOUFLAGED TANKS PARADE ST. LOUIS in the Oklahoma City Times, April 10, 1919, p. 4—

St. Louis, April 10—Twenty camouflaged tanks, similar to those used at the front, paraded through the business section today as part of a reception in honor of Major General Leonard Wood, commander of the central department of the army, who is in St, Louis in the interest of the coming Victory loan campaign. The tanks were operated by returned soldiers.

•••

BATTLESHIP FLOAT OF MARINE ELECTRICAL WORKERS IN PARADE in The Boston Globe, September 3, 1918, p. 7 (see news photograph below)—

One of the most striking features of the parade was the float of the Marine Electrical Workers of America—the Navy Yard local union. This was a model of a battleship, about 50 feet long and 20 feet high, with wireless cracking and guns shooting confetti.

Another attractive float was that of the Painters' Association from the Navy Yard, showing a camouflaged torpedo boat destroyer model, over which was hung the inscription, "This Is How We Fool the Kaiser's U-Boats."

Dazzle Ship Float in Boston Parade (1918)

Boston Harbor Camouflage

Above Cartoon by Wallace Goldsmith (1873-1945). It accompanied the news feature quoted below.

•••

Anon, CAMOUFLAGE LESSONS IN BOSTON HARBOR, in The Boston Globe, Wednesday, July 10, 1918, p. 3—

Lessons in camouflage are of daily occurrence in Boston Harbor nowadays.

Like a fat lady hustling home, the ferry boat churned its way across the harbor.

A gentleman in a checkered suit and wearing a fuzzy face tottered uneasily against the railing.

He gazed abstractly at the harbor shipping. Suddenly a look of consternation came into his eyes. These he rubbed vigorously with a large red fist—once, twice and yet a third time. He gave his head a vision-clearing shake. “No good!” he exclaimed. “it’s still there.” Turning about with a frightened expression he nervously plucked a fellow-voyager by the sleeve and with trembling voice cried, “Say, old pal, do you see what I see?”

“Dunno,” replied “Pal.” “I been used to seein’ a lot o’ things in my time, but if it’s that there ship with the futurist paintin’ on her that you’re alludin’ to, why you can set your mind at rest. We’re seein’ the same thing. It’s real an’ you needn’t be expectin’ to see no pink elephants wander’ into your field o’ vision. 

“That there weird art work is camouflage calculated to fool them Germans.”

“O,” ejaculated the fuzzy-faced one in a relieved tone, “that crazy lookin’ ship sure ought to scare that Kaiser all right when he gets his lamps onto it.”

“‘Tain’t to scare the Kaiser. Them wavy lines an’ splotches is supposed to look like waves when he gets to sea, and it’s calculated that the U-boats can’t see her cause the ocean’s got a lot more waves floppin’ round. An’ if a sub tries to get her all its got to shoot at is the steamer’s smoke, an’ out there in the ocean I reckon that’s like shootin’ at the wide, wide world.”

“She sure is hid some.”

“Well, we live and learn,” said he of the checkered suit, in a relieved tone. “All you got to do to hide things is to paint ‘em like the things around ‘em, and there you are, or, rather, there it ain’t.”

“Yep, you got the idea now,” said Pal. “I been studyin’ this thing for some time. I’ve got a little house out here a piece, and there’s trees out back of it. I’ve been thinkin’ I’d paint trees on the front of the house, and then it’d look like nothin’ but woods was there.

“And when the bill collector that’s been pesterin’ me comes out next time he’ll look astonished and prob’ly say, ‘Gosh hang it! I could a swore Bill Jones lived right here, and here I am lost in the woods.’

“Also, I’ve a little flip, and I like to go out speedin’ now and then, but these here park cops have got my number, and they’re all the time holdin’ me up.

“I’m goin’ to fool ‘em. I’m goin’ to paint flowers all over the whiz cart an’ when the park cop sets his eyes on to her he’ll begin cussin’ the park dept for plantin’ gardens in the middle of the road.

“By the time he realizes that the garden’s movin’ I’ll be past him and so far away he’ll think he’s only had a bad dream.”

At this juncture the ferry reached her slip and the conversation terminated in the noise and flurry of the hurrying throng.

Boston Common Camouflage | Artist Philip Little

Photo of Boston Common camouflage (1918)

In earlier postings, we've told the story of how members of the American Women's Service Corps painted a dazzle camouflage scheme on a navy recruiting station that had been built to look like a ship. The recruiting station, known as the USS Recruit, was constructed in Union Square in NYC, then dazzle-painted in July 1918. The purpose of the gaudy-colored pattern was the opposite of concealment: it attracted the attention of passersby, set off a storm of publicity, and thereby increased recruitment.

A few months later, a comparable strategy was used in Boston, not for navy recruitment, but for fundraising through the Liberty Loan Program. As before, it involved the application of a dazzle pattern to a building, using a design devised by Boston artist and ship camoufleur Philip Little. The effort was described and pictured (as shown above) in the Woman's Section of the Boston Sunday Post (October 13, 1918), p. 1, in an unsigned article titled THIS IS THE HOUSE THAT LITTLE DAUBED TO CATCH YOUR EYE AND SPARE CHANGE: Remarkable Example of the New Art of Reversed Camouflage, Now Aplash with Vivid Colors, on Boston Common as Aid to Liberty Loan Drive. Here is the entire text—

While common camouflage is more or less of a "now you see it and now you don't" proposition, reverse camouflage is coming into its own, and this time it's "now you see it first, last and all of the time," and hence the glaring structure of heterogeneous color known as Liberty Hall which has come into being on the Tremont street mall of the Common which is exciting the wonderment of thousands who daily pass that way. 

Philip Little, the artist, is the originator of reverse camouflage. Some time ago he was asked by the Liberty Loan committee to suggest a design for a new Library Loan building for the Common with an idea for the same to be camouflaged.

Mr. Little came forward with a new and startling scheme. He figured that since the committee wanted a building to attract all of the attention possible, camouflage, which primarily seeks to hide objects, was not what was really wanted, so he conceived the thought of reverse camouflage, and of having the building painted so that it would be the most striking thing in sight.

How well he succeeded can be by the Sunday Post's color photograph [not shown in color here] which has been reproduced according to the color that have been painted, or by a trip to the building itself.

It was planned to use the allied flags liberally for decoration of the building, but Mr. Little has utilized the color for the colors of his reverse camouflage only. They have been put on in the colors of red, blue, green, orange and black in great curving lines.

Throughout the scheme of decoration can be seen the colors of the five great allies in ever-varying combinations. No two designs are alike, yet it would puzzle one in many instances to describe their difference.

The entire Liberty Hall structure has been deluged with reverse camouflage in the wildest possible style. Inside and outside, Liberty Hall is a thing to look twice at. But with even one glance you can't forget it or evade its tenacious grasp upon your optical nerves.

Liberty Hall may not be a thing of beauty, but it is most certainly a joy to the eye and heart of those who care for bright color and bizarre effects.

Der Tater Tot | Dead Potatoes Camouflaged

Spurious butterfly species (top)

Above Two examples of the same butterfly, known as the Brimstone Butterfly (Gonepteryx rhamni). However, the one at the top has been altered. It was sent by British butterfly collector William Charlton to London entomologist James Petiver in 1702. Sixty years later, it was examined by Carl Linnaeus, who (not noticing that the large dark spots had been added with paint) concluded that it was a new species, which he named Papilio ecclipsis. Today, the hoax is known as the Charlton Brimstone Butterfly.

••

Anon, THIEF USED CAMOUFLAGE: Job Monaghan's Potatoes Were Stolen in Boston Sunday Post, October 14, 1917, p. 10—

When Job Monaghan, a Wellesley [MA] mason, went to his vegetable garden yesterday to spade up a plentiful harvest of potatoes, which he confidently anticipated to find beneath a luxuriant growth of potato vines, he was confronted instead with a camouflage in his potato patch.

Having prepared a storage for the tubers, Job took his trusty spade and proceeded to dig in the potato patch for the long-waited-for spud. The first vine dug out unearthed not a single "tater." Thinking they had grown to an enormous size and had by their sheer weight sunk deeply into the soil he excavated as far as the handle of his spade would permit. He failed to uncover a single potato. The second vine was excavated the same as the first and a similar result followed.

Excavating-and-discovering-nothing was kept up until 85 vines had been accounted for. At this stage he claims to have lost count, because of his perplexity in failing to explain the vegetable phenomena.

He leaned on his hoe and gave himself up to meditation. After a little reflection he concluded that somebody had deftly extracted the tubers and had spruced the vines that they might stand life-like and be a deception. Some expert in the art of potato camouflage had done the work after first poaching the highly-prized spud.

"It surely was a work of art," contemplated Job Monaghan. "That man has missed his vocation. He worked with high skill in the potato trenches and deceived me with the alluring idea that a wealth of tubers lay awaiting my spade under the stout vines. His place is in France and his line is placing camouflage as a delusion to the German riflemen."

•••

Anon, CAMOUFLAGE REPLACES STRONG ARM IN UNDERWORLD in Logansport Pharus Reporter, November 24, 1919, p. 12—

NEW YORK, Nov. 24—Strong arm methods are considered antiquated in New York's thuggery circles. Camouflage and the double-cross have supplanted the "rough stuff."

This is the information gained by Assistant District Attorney John F. Joyce in an interview with Charles Gless and Joe Hylan, ex-prize fighters, held as material witnesses in the killing of Harry Issacs, a laundryman. The prisoners told Joyce:

"Nowadays when a guy's hired to do up another guy he goes to that guy, they makes a deal, the guy to be done up camouflages with court plaster and maybe an arm in a sling, and then the strong arm guy brings round the guy what hired him, points out the 'damage' to the camouflaged guy, collects the coin, and splits with the lad what's camouflaged. See?"

Ship Camouflage Artist | More on Henry C. Grover

WWI dazzle-painted US ship [color added]

A couple of years ago, we posted information about World War I American ship camoufleur Henry C. Grover, but wished we knew more. Today, we are slightly better informed, having just found a newspaper article with the headline: HENRY C. GROVER CHOSEN CAMOUFLAGE SECRETARY. Boston Sunday Globe (February 3, 1918), p. 10—

A Boston commercial artist was yesterday appointed camouflage secretary of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. He is Henry C. Grover of 79 Mount Vernon Street, Melrose, who has a studio at 44 Bromfield Street. The first announcement of the appointment came yesterday afternoon, when Mr. Grover, as one of the guests at the Canadian Club luncheon at the City Club, was introduced by his new title. He leaves for Washington today to assume his new duties, which will take him to many American ports.

Mr. Grover was in the recruiting subcommittee of the Boston Committee on Public Safety, and through his work there he came to the attention of officials of the Emergency Fleet Corporation. The Globe of December 23, 1898 , printed a story of Yankee enterprise at Santiago [during the Spanish-American War], about a Boston boy who displayed a sign well known to Bostonians. It was about Mr. Grover, then a private in Company A, Second Massachusetts Regiment, USV, orderly for Brigadier General William Ludlow.

Mr. Grover says there's nothing new in camouflage. "The Indians used it," he says. "The French are doing the greatest tricks with it now. The Yankees ought to be able to show them all something about it."

"Camouflage is a new name for an old idea. Some folks camouflage with words, others with money, others with clothes. We'll try it with the brush and paint pot—and other things." Mrs. Grover and their three-year-old son will remain in Melrose for the present.

more info