Noel Martin, Ralston Crawford as WWII Camoufleurs

Noel Martin exhibition poster

Canadian-born American artist Ralston Crawford (1906-1978) is usually said to have been a Precisionist, with the result that his paintings (and photographs) are typically grouped with those of Joseph Stella, Charles Demuth and Charles Sheeler. Until recently, I hadn’t realized that, early in his career, Crawford worked as an illustrator at the Walt Disney Studio. Later, in the 1930s to early 1940s, he taught at the Art Academy of Cincinnati.

In 1942, at age 36, Crawford received a World War II draft notice. As an experienced photographer, he asked to be assigned to photography for the US Navy. But when he failed to meet the Navy’s requirements, he applied for the camouflage division of the US Engineers Corps. He despised basic training, so much so that he later said that “the enemy was not Hitler, or Mussolini” but what he described as those “those miserable, stupid and sometimes vicious people” who trained recruits “in modern assasination techniques.” As a result, he asked to be assigned to the Weather Division of the Visual Presentation Unit (producing training materials, such as instructional drawings, models, and filmstrips).

While teaching in Cincinnati, one of Crawford students had been a young man named Noel Martin (1922-2009). From 1942-45, Martin served in the US Army as a specialist in camouflage and information. After the war, Martin was asked to design various information brochures for the Cincinnati Art Museum. He learned about the printing process from a craftsman at the museum, and then gradually taught himself the rudiments of graphic design, a profession not then taught in art schools because (in Martin’s words) of “art school snobbery.” Other prominent graphic designers and illustrators who were associated with the Art Academy of Cincinnati at about the same time were Malcolm Grear and Charley Harper.

Beginning in 1986, I taught illustration and graphic design at the Art Academy of Cincinnati until 1990. Noel Martin had more or less retired as the museum's designer, but he was still in the area. 

By that time, I had published a number of articles and one book on art and camouflage. When I learned that Martin had been a WWII camoufleur, I arranged to meet with him for lunch. We talked about his camouflage service, and I jotted down some cryptic notes. I no longer know their whereabouts (although I have them somewhere), but one thing that I do recall is that he mentioned several others whom he knew who had also served as camoufleurs. Of those I clearly remember, one was Victor Christ-Janer (1915-2008). 

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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

Blend and Dazzle | Art of Camouflage in PRINT 1991

Above and below In old age, in retirement mode, looking through publication files, found this large, then-wonderful article on a lecture series on camouflage at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. It was published in the January / February 1991 issue of PRINT Magazine (New York). It was my first article for that delightful magazine (now defunct), for which I wrote articles, editorials, and book reviews for probably a dozen years.

San Francisco Camouflage Artists

Chameleons, German book illustration (1897)

We've recently located a 1919 news article that describes the return to San Francisco from the war in France of twenty-five American camoufleurs, all but two of whom were from San Francisco. They arrived on the evening of February 12, and the news story (including three photographs) appeared on the front page of the San Francisco Chronicle the following day. The headline reads (in part): S.F. SOLDIER ARTISTS BACK FROM FRONT. Detachment of Camoufleurs From 20th Engineers Return to City. It mentions in particular Sergeant Frank W. Swain, who "was a well-known art student of San Francisco before he joined the camouflage section. He studied at the University of California School of Fine Arts, and later under [Frank] Duveneck, the great American artist of Cincinnati." Here is the article's list of the twenty-five men in the unit—

Lieutenants [Richard S.] Meryman and Jack [Gage] Stark [neither one from San Francisco]; Sergeant Nishan Tooroonjian, sculptor; Sergeant Jack L. Osthoff, artist; Sergeant Frank W. Swain, artist; Sergeant Louis De Wald, artist; Sergeant Marcus M. Meherin, Jr, artist; Sergeant Joseph Kopersky, designer; Sergeant Sam Macloud, painter; Stanley Long, painter; Sergeant Albert [Sheldon] Pennoyer, artist; Corporal Clifford Neil, artist; Sergeant William R. Moran, mechanic; Sergeant Frank Duncan, artist…

…All of the men wore on their left shoulder a yellow chameleon—nature's own camoufleur, and emblematic of the soldiers' work in colors to deceive and mislead.

Some of these names are familiar. The lieutenant in charge, Richard S[umner] Meryman, was a student of Abbott H. Thayer in Dublin NH, and had collaborated with Thayer and (his son) Gerald H. Thayer prior to 1909 in illustrating their influential book on Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (available online). 

In two earlier blog posts, we've also talked about A. Sheldon Pennoyer, who was one of the founders of the pre-war organization called the American Camouflage Western Division. There is mention of Pennoyer in an earlier column called "Artists and Their Work" by Anna Cora Winchell (San Francisco Chronicle, November 23, 1917), which reads as follows—

A greeting from artists and the camouflage corps comes from Camp Lewis, Washington, through A. Sheldon Pennoyer. It will be remembered that he was the dominating spirit, previous to being drafted, in organizing the camouflage in San Francisco.

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 From R. Tripp Evans, Grant Wood: A Life. New York: Knopf, 2010—

During World War I, [Grant] Wood was stationed in Washington DC, where he worked for the American Expeditionary Force Camouflage Division…Given his penchant for self-effacement it is equally fitting, as [his sister] Nan records, that he kept a pet chameleon in his studio.

additional sources

Camouflage Artist | Charles H. Ebert

Charles H. Ebert (1873-1959)

Of late I have been trying to find information about an American impressionist painter named Charles H. Ebert (1873-1959). Born to affluent parents in Milwaukee, he grew up in Kansas City. His artistic training was at the Art Academy of Cincinnati, and the Art Students League in New York. In 1894, he went to Paris to study, along with Charles Allan Gilbert (who contributed to ship camouflage in WWI), Ernest Kaiser, Oscar Lentz, and Ernest L. Blumenschein (who had earlier been his roommate). When he returned to the US in 1896, he became the chief political cartoonist for Life magazine. He resigned that position after four years, and moved to Greenwich CT to paint full-time and to study with John Henry Twachtman. While studying with Twachtman, he became acquainted with Mary Roberts, who was also an artist, as well as the inheritor of a family fortune that had come from her father's invention of a device for oil drilling. They married in 1908.

Mary Roberts Ebert had graduated in 1895 from Wellesley College. In that school's alumni notes for 1917, she is described as "living this winter in New York. Her husband, Carl [sic] Ebert, an artist noted for his landscape painting, is doing experimental work for the camouflage of ships at sea" (p. 119). Presumably, Ebert was working in New York, where he was probably among the team of civilian camouflage artists headed by William Andrew Mackay.

Photo credit: Charles H. Ebert, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum J0106662.

Dazzle Camouflage at Cincinnati

An original exhibition titled SEAGOING EASTER EGGS: Artists' Contributions to Dazzle Ship Camouflage will open soon at the Art Academy of Cincinnati. Curated by Roy R. Behrens (author of FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (2002) and CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (2009)), the exhibition will be held at the Convergys Gallery at the Art Academy at 1212 Jackson Street, from January 15, 2010 through February 12.

The exhibit is free and open to the public during gallery hours: Mon-Fri 9:00 am to 9:00 pm, and Sat-Sun 9:00 am to 5:00 pm.

In addition, Professor Behrens will present a slide talk about art and camouflage at 7:00 pm, Thursday, January 28 in the Proctor and Gamble Lecture Hall at the Art Academy, an event sponsored by the Cincinnati AIGA. On Friday, January 29, there will be a reception in the gallery from 5:00 to 9:00 pm.

Included in the exhibit are photographs, camouflage diagrams, ship models and other historic artifacts that pertain to contributions by artists, designers and architects to World War I US naval camouflage, particularly dazzle camouflage. It is dedicated to the memories of Meyer Abel, Walter Arnett, and Noel Martin, all of whom attended the Art Academy, then served in World War II as camouflage artists.

The exhibit was made possible in part by access to materials in the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, and the Everett L. Warner Archives. Other material was provided by Lyn Malone, the granddaughter of architect and Olympic fencer Harold Van Buskirk, who headed American naval camouflage in World War I. The ship models, which were cast for this exhibit by German manufacturer Norbert Broecher, were donated by Ulrich Rudofsky.