Camouflage Through Purposeful Shadow Disruption

Paul Strand, Porch Shadows (1916)

Above Photograph by Paul Strand, titled Porch Shadows (1916)•. Courtesy Library of Congress. Public domain.

Strand was one of a number of photographers before and after World War I who relied on a well-known shadow effect that resembles the patterns of venetian blinds. Other examples are easily found, notably in the photographs of Max Dupain••, Harold Cazneaux, Alexander Rodchenko, and Laszlo Moholy Nagy.

As mentioned in an earlier post, disruptive shadow effects are also frequently found in paintings in the latter part of the 19th century, especially Impressionist. Among the most compelling is John Singer Sargent's masterful Breakfast in the Loggia (1910), which is reproduced below.

John Singer Sargent, Breakfast in the Loggia (1910)

In the early years of World War I, military camoufleurs began to apply disruptive patterns to vehicles and other equipment, to purposely break up their shapes. Soon after (probably as a consequence of a proposal by British painter and camouflage officer Solomon J. Solomon), it became evident that disruptive patterns can also result from the shadow effects of the overhead sun. Nets suspended overhead, garnished with scraps of fabric, could break up any components below, without applying any paint. We've talked about this earlier as umbrella camouflage.

Of course, this was nothing new. Today the same effect is seen on a tennis court, when the shadows of the chain link fence break up the shape of a lost ball in the grass. In an issue of the Illustrated London News (August 31, 1918, p. 233), this disruptive shadow effect was demonstrated in a photograph (shown below) of a group of soldiers inspecting a supply of ammunition, stored beneath a garnished net.

At the end of the war, non-military examples of shadow disruption were published in an issue of The Sketch (May 22, 1919, p. 209), with the headline: SUN PICTURES! LIGHT EFFECTS IN A FEZ BAZAAR: A Picturesque Network Effect of Light and Shade: Interesting French Photographs of a Covered Market at Fez. One example is shown below.

Finally, it is only fitting to conclude with one of the best-known photographs of shadow distruption (below) by the Russian Constructivist Alexander Rodchenko, titled Girl with a Leica (c1933).

• There is some disagreement about the proper orientation of Paul Strand's photograph. Should it be in vertical format, as shown here, or should it be horizontal instead, with the circular table in the upper right corner? It is most commonly reproduced as a vertical.
•• Australian art historian Ann Elias has written extensively on Max Dupain and the purposeful use of shadows in photography and camouflage.

Godawful Poesy and Sorolla Ship Camouflage Plan

Above This is the cover of the printed sheet music for a World War I-era song titled The Camouflage March (1918). The words and music are by Horace B. Blan (a New York attorney). There is an online version of the original at the Library of Congress website here that can be downloaded as a public domain pdf. We would reprint the lyrics were they not so poorly written.

Note the dedication to the employees of the Standard Shipbuilding Corporation. Not surprisingly, in the background at the bottom is a drawing of a dazzle-camouflaged merchant ship.

•••

Below A hypothetical dazzle-camouflage plan, in the style of Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida (1863-1923).

Dazzle scheme ala Sorolla

Camouflage Artist | Gordon Stevenson

Model Painting Room (c1918)

Above is a wonderful photograph of US Navy camouflage artists during World War I. It was initially published on the title page of a magazine article called "Fooling the Iron Fish: The Inside Story of Marine Camouflage" in Everybody's Magazine (November 1919), pp. 102-109. The article was written by American artist Everett Longley Warner, was the officer in charge of the design subsection in Washington DC of the Navy's Camouflage Section. He is seated on the far left, while (from left to right) the other camoufleurs include Frederick Judd Waugh, John Gregory, Gordon Stevenson, Manley K. Nash (in the foreground), and Maurice O'Connell. However, this particular post is about Gordon Stevenson because we recently obtained new information and images about him from his granddaughter, a DuPont chemist.

Gordon Stevenson (1892-1982) was probably born in Chicago, to parents who had immigrated to the US from Scotland. He grew up in Chicago, where he attended the School of the Art Institute there. While still a student, he was awarded two mural commissions, one of which, titled Construction Site (1909) was installed at the Albert G. Lane Technical High School, while the other, The Landing at Jamestown (1910), was among five other murals (by other artists) about moments in American history, installed at the John M. Smyth Elementary School in Chicago. Fortunately, both of Stevenson's murals have survived; they were restored first in the late 1930s, in connection with the WPA, and then restored a second time in the late 1990s.

Gordon Stevenson mural, Construction Site (1909)

As an advanced student at the Art Institute, Stevenson was also awarded the John Quincy Adams Prize, a foreign travel stipend worth $425. This enabled him to travel to Spain and to work as an apprentice for the well-known Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, whose paintings were not unlike those of his friend, John Singer Sargent. There is a portrait of Stevenson by Sorolla dated 1917 (reproduced below), which may be the year he returned to the US.

Joaquin Sorolla y Bastida, Portrait of Gordon Stevenson (c1917)

Soon after, whatever the circumstances, Stevenson was chosen to serve in the camouflage subsection that was headed by Warner.

Further confirmation of his wartime service is in two other government photographs. In one (dated July 12, 1918), he is shown in a different room, where he and three co-workers are painting ship models. Stevenson is standing in the center background. The other artists include (left to right) sculptor John Gregory, marine painter Frederick Waugh, and theatrical scene painter Manley K. Nash.

buy online

In another photograph, this one of the drafting room (where he and his co-workers prepared schematic instructions on how to paint the actual ships), he can barely be seen in the background. He is in the very back row in the center (looking down), directly beneath the wall clock.

On August 25, 1918, an article (BENEFIT OF BLIND SOLDIERS) in the Washington Post announced a garden party "for the benefit of the American, French and British blinded soldiers."  The decorations for the fundraising event, the article continues, "will consist of an extraordinary display of flags of all nations and of specially prepared banners painted by members of the camouflage section of the navy." Also featured will be "Gordon Stevenson, of New York, who will sketch portraits while you wait."

Camoufleurs in the drafting room

Following the war, Stevenson continued to reside in New York, where he had considerable success as an illustrator and portrait painter. Of particular note is a portrait he made of Mark Twain, which now hangs in The Players club in NYC. There are at least four other Stevenson portraits in that club's collection. His portraits of other dignitaries can also be found in the Museum of the City of New York, Rutgers University, National Academy of Design, and the Toledo Museum of Art.

Stevenson was a prolific magazine illustrators for prominent publications, notably the New York Times Book Review. He also made a series of portraits for the covers of TIME magazine (1923-24), including pencil drawings of Jack Dempsey, Herbert Hoover, Mrs. Herbert Hoover, Samuel Gompers, Ataturk, Winston Churchill, Fritz Kreisler, Roy Chapman Andrews, Joseph Conrad, Woodrow Wilson, and David Lloyd George. The list goes on—reproduced below are some.

One of those covers (as seen below) was a portrait of Homer St. Gaudens (son of the sculptor Augustus St. Gaudens), who had been the officer in charge of US Army camouflage in WWI.

Speaking of camouflage, below is a marvelous portrait he made (ala Arcimboldo) for the cover of Outdoor Life magazine (August 1940). In 1948, he also illustrated a book by his father-in-law, Edward R. Hewitt (grandson of New York industrialist Peter Cooper, who founded Cooper Union), titled A Trout and Salmon Fisherman: For Seventy-Five Years (New York: Scribner's and Sons). The same family also established the Smithsonian Institution's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum.

Illustration by Gordon Stevenson (c1940)

In the Peter A. Juley & Son Collection at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, there are eight portrait photographs of Gordon Stevenson, taken in 1962, which can be accessed online here.

•••

Since this was originally posted, I have run across an online interview of American artist Everett Raymond Kinstler, titled "On the Shoulders of Giants" and conducted in 2009 by Ira Goldberg. It is online here at LINEA: The Artist's Voice.  On page 7, Kinstler states:

The painter Gordon Stevenson, who'd taken classes with [Joaquín] Sorolla in Spain and knew [John Singer] Sargent, was another of my mentors. Gordon would drop by my studio—he was well along in years, an elegant man, who lacked fire in his belly because he didn't have to work for a living. He'd look at my work and begin his remarks with, "Now, Sargent told me that…" or, "When I was with Sorolla…"

Gordon Stevenson, portrait of Homer St. Gaudens

The Camoufleur | WWI Camp Newspaper

We've been greatly excited this week—and for good reason. A few days ago, we received a wonderful package from a Texas-based librarian named Nancy Cunningham. After seeing our blog, she sent an email, asking if we might be interested in three issues of a World War I camp newspaper called The Camoufleur. According to an editorial note, it was published by the "Camouflage Company of the 24th Engineers" [elsewhere I've seen it listed as Company F of the 25th Engineers, but before long it was reorganized as Company A of the 49th Engineers]. Also known as  the American Camouflage Corps, the unit was in training in 1917 at Camp American University, on the outskirts of Washington DC, preparing to go off to France.

We are so pleased to discover that these materials have somehow survived all these years (they are terribly fragile, and it's entirely possible that these are the only remaining copies). The first issue was published on October 31, 1917, with subsequent issues on November 17 and December 11 (most likely these were the only issues, because soon after the date of the third one, the unit sailed for Europe). Each issue consists of eight pages, measuring 11 inches wide by 13.75 inches in length, and printed on now-brittle newsprint. The front page of the second issue is shown above. The motto on the masthead reads "Seeing Was Believing."

Presumably all the contents of these issues (brief articles, updates on the camoufleurs' work, bad poetry, cartoons and comic drawings) were produced by the American artists and architects who were serving at US Army camoufleurs. Many of their names are included in the lists of contributors. Other names are mentioned because the same unit also produced and performed in a camouflage-themed stage comedy, titled Les Blagueurs (the jokers). With a cast of forty-one performers, the four-act comedy premiered at Camp American University, then traveled to Camp Meade (near Middletown PA) for repeat performances on November 23 and 24.

We've talked about many of these artists before, in earlier postings on this blog, or on our websites, or in three books on the subject, FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage (2002), CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (2009), and SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. In the second issue (shown above) there is an article about a visit to the camouflage unit by US President Woodrow Wilson, Mrs. Wilson, Secretary of War Newton Baker, Commanding General John J. Pershing (although I'm no longer certain of that) and various other high-ranking officers and dignitaries on October 31, 1917. What the article fails to mention is that, by happenstance, among the visitors that day was the well-known portrait painter, John Singer Sargent. In fact, if you look at the front page of this issue, in the photograph on the left the President and Mrs. Wilson are in the foreground, while Sargent (circled in red) is standing in the background. (Incidently, according to The Camoufleur, the two soldiers in charge of the day's demonstrations were Iowa-born sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry and New Hampshire muralist Barry Faulkner, a cousin of Abbott H. Thayer, the "father of camouflage.")

Below is another photograph of the same event taken at nearly the very same moment. It's available online at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs website, but it was also distributed to newspapers throughout the country, and used in brief news stories about Wilson's reaction to the camoufleurs' demonstrations.

For example, the following news article, titled "President Wilson Is Fooled by Camouflage. Unable To See Soldier within Five Feet of Him," was published in the New York Tribune, November 15, 1917, p. 2—

Camouflage, that deceptive military art, fools others besides soldiers and airmen on the Western front. Right down in Washington it has hoodwinked n0less a person than the commander and chief [sic] of the army and navy, Woodrow Wilson.

The story of how this came about was told last night at the Fine Arts Building, in West Fifty-Seventh Street, by Captain Aymar Embury [in civilian life, a prominent architect], of the engineer corps, who told of the camouflage work that he and his men are doing at the experimental field at Washington Barracks, near the nation's capital.

The President was invited to a demonstration of camouflage at the field. With him came the Secretary of War and fourteen generals [among them, according to the article, Generals William P. Biddle, Saltsman, William M. Black, Winslow, Abbott, and Edwin B. Babbitt], and they were all fooled.

"Do you see the man?" Captain Embury asked the Chief Executive as he stood upon the field.

"What man?" Mr. Wilson asked, and refused to believe it when he was told that a soldier was concealed within five feet of him.

The captain blew a whistle and a soldier sprang, literally from the earth [from a hole in the ground, beneath a papier maché rock, as seen here in the foreground], to the President's delight.

They then asked Mr. Wilson if he could find the field gun concealed near by. He looked long and hard. There didn't seem enough cover for one, and he said so at last.

"And then," said Captain Embury last night, "A screen of foliage was swung aside and the gun went off. The President jumped. It was a good hearty jump. He seemed to cover about fourteen [feet? inches?] of ground."

But why was John Singer Sargent there? It turns out that Sargent had been at the White House that morning, painting a portrait of the President. During the sitting, the subject of military camouflage came up, and Sargent could not help but tell about his strange experience two years earlier, when he had offered to assist American painter Abbott H. Thayer in demonstrating the effectiveness of camouflage to the British Army's top brass in London (we'll share more on Thayer and that ill-fated effort in a future post). By coincidence, the President explained, he, the First Lady and others had been invited to a training camp that same afternoon to witness the clever inventions of the American Camouflage Corps. At Wilson's suggestion, Sargent joined the entourage.

As for the wealth of materials in these three issues of The Camoufleur, this is (as they say) only the tip of the iceberg. We've now scanned every page very carefully, to provide future researchers with access to digital files and printed facsimiles, and we will be publishing other highlights in future postings on this blog. Again, all this has thankfully come about through the wisdom and generosity of librarian Nancy Cunningham, who purchased these and assorted materials on eBay many years ago while looking for information about the 604th Engineers (in France, c1918), her grandfather's unit. These materials had been the property of Major William John Harrison (a medical officer), who had been a camp doctor during 1917 at Camp American University. For whatever reason, he never discarded these issues of this wonderfully odd publication.

One other note related to this: In an old issue of the Ogden Standard (Ogden UT), on January 19, 1918, p. 1, there is a substantial article on "Trench and Camp Newspapers for Our Soldiers." It focuses on two WWI American camp publications, of which one is The Camoufleur.

Camouflage Artist | Robert Webb Jr.

John Singer Sargent, The Hermit (detail), oil on canvas, 1908

Of late, we've been trying to find information about a little-known American artist named Robert (Bob) Webb, Jr. (1897-1987), who apparently served as a ship camoufleur during World War I.

He is interesting for other reasons as well: It seems that he assisted John Singer Sargent (by preparing the paints) when, in 1915, that artist was commissioned to paint a mural (The Triumph of Religion) for the Boston Public Library. According to Webb, he learned from that experience but Sargent paid him not a cent. After World War I, he moved to Florida, where he worked with other artist-designers in decorating the elaborate interior of Ca d'Zan (Venetian dialect for "house of John"), the palatial winter home of John and Mable Ringling (of Ringling Brothers Circus fame) in Sarasota. Decades later, in the 1960s, Webb returned to Florida to participate in the restoration of that mansion, now part of the Ringling Museum of Art. He also worked for Colonial Williamsburg for more than twenty years.

One of the sources I've found thus far is a 204-page book about Webb's life, titled Tramp Artist: The Life of Robert Webb Jr., compiled by his daughter, Thelma Webb Wright, and published in 2003. It features reproductions of numerous works (paintings, interior crafts and Williamsburg signs) and extended excerpts from his tape-recorded memories. The book is largely a tribute to Webb and his first wife Rosa (the author's mother), who died in 1974. I've also found an online source (dated 1999) that's also credited to Thelma Webb Wright, who was apparently at the time a volunteer at the Ringling Museum. A third source is a recent 312-page alternative biography called Apprentice to Master (Trafford Publishing, 2010), written by Webb's second wife, Katheryn Webb, whom he married in 1976.

Regarding Webb's service as a World War I camouflage artist, the two authors (combined with Webb's transcribed account) provide somewhat different narratives. According to the Wright biography, Webb enlisted in the Navy in 1918. Soon after, he was assigned to camouflage in Norfolk as a result of having been recommended for that by Webb's mentor, Massachusetts artist Frederick Mortimer Lamb (1861-1936) and Sargent (the two had met as students at the Académie Julian in Paris) . His commanding officer was Lieutenant-Commander Nathan Bushnell, who (according to Webb's first-person account) "was in charge of all camouflaging for the Navy" (this is contrary to anything I've ever heard) and was also the Chief of Naval Intelligence.

This is Webb's description of how he designed ship camouflage: "My buddy and I used to take photographs of the ships that were not camouflaged… Using the photos as a guide, we'd cut a silhouette out of masonite… I'd make the designs on the sides of the ships, and these other guys would color them in. …[You couldn't actually hide a ship] So I figured the only thing to do with them buggers is to fool them. So I'd paint a submarine on the side of the ship, and I'd write all kinds of cross lines, circles, everything, so they [the German U-boat commanders] couldn't get a line on it. The front of the ship, I'd paint a bow on it. I'd paint another bow, so when they come up she'd be going the other way" (Wright, pp. 14-15).

Wright's book cites another source, an article in the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), on April 12, 1986, in which Webb is quoted as follows: "Typical [camouflage] designs were angles and circles. I even painted a submarine on the side of one ship. Colors made no difference as long as they were strong, like dark blue, black or yellow. We made the craziest ships you ever saw in your life." Wright also notes that, years later, when the US entered World War II, Webb attempted to revive his ship camouflage efforts: "[He] had several dozen plywood silhouettes of ships cut and proceeded to paint camouflage designs on them… When he learned about radar and sonar, he said in disgust, 'The Navy used to have iron men and wooden ships, now they have wooden men and iron ships.' His wooden ships became kindling" (p. 18).

In Apprentice to Master, Webb's involvement in ship camouflage is discussed in greater detail. According to that author, Sargent was approached by Rear Admiral William Sims (head of the US Navy), who explained that "a new service was being set up within the Navy that would use art to protect troops, cargo and battleships from enemy torpedoes. It would be called a 'camouflage department.' The secretary asked Sargent's opinion as to what qualifications the men should have who would staff the new department… Sargent, in answering the Secretary of the Navy's request for qualifications of men to fill this roll as camouflage artists, proposed that his young friend Robert James Webb, Jr., be put in charge of the new department! Bob could set the standard for all the other recruits to the new camouflage department. Sargent offered to write Bob Webb a recommendation, which he did, there at the dinner table" (pp. 61-62).

Elsewhere in the same book, it is stated that Webb was "put in charge" of Navy camouflage (p. 83), that he served as  "chief camouflage artist" (p. 93), and that "The camouflage work he did…was unique and copied throughout the Navy" (p. 187). In the online book description at Amazon, an even stronger claim is made that Webb "went on to become the first camouflage artist in the Navy during WWI." Having researched and written about art and camouflage for forty years, I am astonished to learn this now. In all those years, I've never heard of Robert Webb, Jr., and I don't know any other source that claims he played such a prominent role in WWI naval camouflage. Needless to say, the search goes on.

WWI Umbrella Camouflage

Disruptive shadows in a Spanish street festival (c1909)

For whatever reason, there was increased interest in the disruptive effects of shadows among photographers, painters and other artists near the close of the 19th century. This is especially evident in the paintings of certain European and American painters. See for example, John Singer Sargent's Breakfast on the Loggia or The Hermit. In some cases, no doubt it was inspired by patterns of disruption in the protective coloration of animals, as confirmed by demonstrations by Abbott H. Thayer and others. During World War I, comparable techniques were adopted for concealing from aerial observation personnel and equipment on the ground.

According to James E. Edmonds (in History of the Great War, Vol 1, London: Macmillan, 1932, pp. 83-84), “Concealment from the air was first attempted by the use of canvas sheets painted to represent the ground as seen from an airplane. Experience proved these to be heavy to erect and difficult to maintain in position. On the suggestion of Mr. [Solomon J.] Solomon, they were replaced by a lighter and more manageable article [called “umbrella camouflage” or "garnished nets"], in the form of old fish nets or wire netting, garnished with tufts of painted or dyed raffia (gardener’s bast). For the Somme thousands of rolls of wire netting were supplied to the divisional engineers who, when raffia was lacking, wove grass into it. In the course of time all batteries were equipped with these overhead covers. As the demand increased and the supply of raffia became inadequate, canvas strips were substituted for it, and were found to be less flammable.”

But apparently long before the war, there was a civilian tradition of doing more or less the same, as shown here by this photograph from a 1909 issue of The Strand Magazine (p. 719) of a Spanish street festival. Submitted by Edmund Pöhler of Barcelona, the article states: "This strange effect, produced by sunshine and shade, is a common scene in Spanish towns, where, once every year, about eight days are set apart as the Fiesta Major (Grand Holidays). During this period each district vies with its neighbor in adorning the streets. Dancing at night to the music of hired musicians, under the fantastic canopy overhead, illuminated by the many lights of every open window and door, invites one and all to participate in the gaiety and animation of the scene."