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

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.

John Wolcott Adams and World War I ship camouflage

Most likely, we have unearthed more information and have written more about the life of American artist William Andrew Mackay (1870-1939) than anyone else [in most online sources, his birth year is mistakenly cited as 1876] . It has been a long extended search, beginning in the 1970s—and it seems as if it never ends. Mackay was a muralist who, at least in that regard, is especially famous for his murals about the life of Theodore Roosevelt, installed beneath the rotunda in the Roosevelt Memorial Hall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. But he also painted numerous other murals in prominent public buildings.

Our initial interest in him began with the contributions he made to the development of ship camouflage before and during World War I. We have talked about his efforts in various earlier blog posts, but we’ve also written a major, detailed essay about his discoveries (acessible free online), and have often featured his work in published books and articles.

Until recently, we were unaware of his connection to John Wolcott Adams (1874-1925), an American illustrator who was a descendant of the famous Adams family of New England, which had produced two US presidents. We learned recently, in an essay by Christine I. Oklander in an exhibition catalog titled John Wolcott Adams: American Life and History (Chadds Ford PA: Brandywine River Museum, 1998) that William Andrew Mackay was “one of [Adams’] closest friends” and that Adams had been “assigned to paint the American liner Philadelphia.” At least one photograph of that camouflaged ship has survived (reproduced above), taken on June 27, 1917.   

In Mackay’s approach to ship camouflage, the goal is low visibility, not confusion or surface disruption (as is the function of dazzle). As shown in the photograph of the ship, Mackay used an optical mixture of red, violet and green, applied in splotch-like patterns (not unlike Pointilism) on the surface of the ship.

Perkins Harnly / artist and cross-dressing camoufleur

Poster, Index of American Design

Few people will have heard of Perkins Harnly (1901-1986), an obscure American artist who grew up in Nebraska, lived in New York for a number of years, and ended up in Hollywood. I first became aware of him while researching a Depression-era art program called the Index of American Design. In a book edited by Francis V. O’Connor, The New Deal Art Projects: An Anthology of Memoirs (Washington DC: Smithsonian Institution, 1972), there is an essay by Lincoln Rothschild in which it is mentioned that “a specially gifted artist” named Perkins Harnley [sic] had provided that agency with “amusing views of a Pullman diner and an ornate stable as well as more ordinary interiors” (p. 184).

If people know about the New Deal Art Projects, it is most likely because they’re familiar with the Works Progress Administration or WPA (see poster above), in which the US Government commissioned unemployed American artists to create public murals for permanent installation in post office lobbies throughout the country. A surprising number of these have survived, and some of them remain on view in local post offices throughout the country.

What is less well-known is the Index of American Design (1953-1942), in which other unemployed artists (not studio "fine artists" but men and women who had previously worked as designers and illustrators, commonly disparaged as “commercial artists”) were hired not to make “creative” murals but to document examples of vintage American crafts (including folk art), through precise, detailed renderings. Among the things included in the Index of American Design were historic children’s rocking horses, carved ship figureheads, folk pottery, handmade clothing and fabrics, cast iron toy banks, antique furniture, weather vanes and other architectural ornaments, and so on. 

These were all beautifully documented in watercolor renderings, in exacting detail and in color. Miraculously, 18,257 of these have been preserved, and are housed at the National Gallery of Art in Washington DC. These images are in public domain, and can be accessed online here. To commemorate that archive (as well as the graphic designers who made them), earlier this year, I designed and posted online a series of posters about  a few of the items it features. 

Among the artists commissioned to make Index of American Design renderings was Perkins Harnly. In addition, he also served briefly as a wartime camouflage instructor. While working for the Index of American Design, Harnly’s supervisor had been a Harvard-trained art museum administrator named Lloyd LaPage Rollins (1890-1970), who had also been director of the DeYoung Museum in San Francisco. According to Harnley, Rollins was gay and was an avid collector of outlandish Victorian-era artifacts, which today would be regarded as “camp.” His housemate and associate was, as Harnly described him, “an attractive pet Scotsman.”

Interestingly, as revealed by Harnly’s biographer Sarah Burns, Harnly himself was gay and would later become notorious for cross-dressing and related misbehavior. Rollins was (in Harnly’s words) “my WPA Projects boss.” It was apparently through Rollins that Harnly was commissioned to make illustrations for the Index of American Design, some of which were rather large, measuring twenty-two by thirty-one inches. Harnly greatly enjoyed this assignment, in which he apparently had few restrictions. In an interview many years later, the artist recalled the freedom he had in completing this project that continued for years:

On the WPA I had all the time in the world. Every plate took four weeks at fourteen hours a day seven days a week to paint…just one took four hundred hours to render so meticulously and none took less than two hundred hours.

These fact-based yet fanciful renderings of Victorian interiors were well-received by government administrators, and that success was underscored when they were later exhibited publicly (twice at the Metropolitan Museum of Art) and reproduced and written about in magazines. Two examples are posted here.

Perkins Harnly, Index of American Design

Perkins Harnly, Index of American Design

From the little that is known about Harnly’s involvement in camouflage, it appears to have been minor in comparison to the work he did for the Index of American Design. When America entered World War II, as Harnly later remembered in a Smithsonian interview, “we were put on defense projects…” He was assigned to camouflage as a civilian instructor, and sent to Fort Belvoir VA. There, he taught camouflage to officers, among them William Pahlmann, a well-known interior designer, and Gene Davis, the art director at Good Housekeeping magazine. The person in charge of camouflage at Fort Belvoir was Homer Saint-Gaudens, the son of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the famous American sculptor. 

When that assignment ended, Harnly was sent back to California, where his supervisor was once again Lloyd Rollins, his former “WPA boss,” but this time he “taught a class on camouflage in the attic of a midtown fire station.” Soon however, that class abruptly crashed and burned when Harnly had a falling out with Rollins’ associate (his so-called “pet Scotsman”), who stormed out in the middle of a work session, whereupon the course was cancelled.

Harnly lived for 85 years. He was colorful, to say the least. Sarah Burns’ recent book about his life is titled The Emphatically Queer Career of Artist Perkins Harnly and His Bohemian Friends (Port Townsend WA: Process Media, 2021). Be prepared for some scandalous content. It is a highly detailed account of the life of a person who grew up in a setting of what he himself described as “trashy Tobacco Road types” in the dregs of rural Nebraska. When interviewed at age 80, he claimed that his birth was premature, by seven months, when he was born in a “pauper’s farmhouse.” With no access to medical care, much less an incubator, he was wrapped in cotton, placed in a shoe box, and kept warm inside an oven.

When he was four or five years old, the family moved to Lincoln NE, where they lived adjacent to the Lyric Theatre. Over the years, his proximity to that stage led to his fascination with linear perspective, painting, and set design. His interest in art had begun as a child, but he did not pursue it intently until he was hired by the WPA for their New Deal art program. It was that opportunity, Harnly recalled, that gave him “the reason, the encouragement, the research, the material, and I really went to town.” In the end, he completed a total of eighty-one renderings of Victorian interiors for the Index of American Design.

There is much more to this story of course, far too much to include in a blog post. But two other aspects of Harnly’s life are of particular interest. First, his paternal grandfather, a Nebraska farmer named Benjamin Harnly, enjoyed considerable success in building elaborate Queen Anne residences in Lincoln. He constructed at least sixteen, the most famous of which was the Bryan House, which he built for William Jennings Bryan. 

Second, Harnly worked temporarily for MGM in Hollywood. This resulted from a showing in New York of twenty-two of his Victorian interior renderings for the Index of American Design. In an exhibition titled “I Remember That,” they were displayed on the mezzanine at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from October 1942 to April 1943. Among the people who viewed them there was an MGM film director named Albert Lewin. He was just then preparing to produce a film version of Oscar Wilde’s novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray. In that story, circumstances are such that a painted portrait of its youthful, handsome protagonist, Dorian Gray, is reduced to putrefaction—as if by otherworldly means—as the physical man himself decays.

Based on his reaction to Harnly’s renderings of Victorian room interiors, Lewin persuaded him to relocate to Hollywood and to contribute to the film as a set design consultant. At the same time, Lewin also contracted two painters, who were brothers from Chicago, named Ivan Le Lorraine Albright, and his identical twin Malvin Marr Albright. They too were brought to Hollywood to work on site on the film. 

The original agreement was that Malvin would complete a portrait of Dorian Gray (looking both handsome and youthful), to be used at the film’s beginning, while Ivan would provide a comparable portrait of the same anti-hero, in a disturbing state of decay, at the end of the film. Ivan Albright’s (now-famous) painting (reproduced below) was used in the finished film, but the painting by his brother was eventually omitted, and replaced by an alternate portrait by a Portuguese artist, Henrique Medina. The paintings by the Albright twins upstaged Harnly’s achievements as a "sketch artist" and set designer. Ivan Albright’s painting was widely publicized, while Harnly is not even mentioned in the film credits.

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

Ivan Albright, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1943)

optical camouflage based on Maxwell's spinning disks

One of the earliest, most important contributors to World War I ship camouflage was an American muralist named William Andrew Mackay (1876-1939). He is best known for having created a series of murals about the achievements of Theodore Roosevelt, which are housed in the rotunda of the Roosevelt Memorial Hall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In advance of WWI, he began to experiment with optical color mixtures in the camouflage of submarines, which he demonstrated with spinning colored disks that had been developed earlier by James Clerk Maxwell. A detailed, richly illustrated account of Mackay's camouflage-related research is accessible online here, and is also downloadable online here.

• Nature, Art, and Camouflage (35 min. video talk) at <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZLX5YQF-H3k> 

• Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage (29 min. video talk) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hiSWNYCNRcM> 

• Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage (26 min. video talk) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3asynn24nD4> 

• Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage (28 min. video talk) <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nS2ZwYyxy1Y>

Genevieve Cowles | Connecticut Woman Camoufleur

Genevieve Cowles, c1932

Above A news photograph of a Connecticut-based artist named Genevieve Alameda Cowles (1871-1950). We blogged about her several years ago in relation to her service during World War I as a camouflage designer for the US Shipping Board, which was a highly unusual role for a woman at the time. She was trained in camouflage design by William Andrew Mackay. An illustrator, stained glass window designer, and mural painter, she was unusual in other ways as well. She was the twin sister of Maude Alice Cowles (1871-1905), who had a parallel career, and with whom she worked collaboratively until the latter’s early death. Below is a photograph of them at age eighteen. 

Maude and (right) Genevieve Cowles

Shortly after her sister’s death, Genevieve proposed to paint a religious mural for the chapel at the State Prison at Wethersfield CT, using the prisoners as models. In the process, she took up the issue of prison reform, a cause she continued to advocate for the rest of her life. In 1932, she wrote a lengthy article (excerpts from which are reprinted below) in which she compared certain aspects of ship camouflage to prejudicial assumptions about the character of prisoners. She illustrated the article with two drawings of the same ship, the first one disruptively camouflaged, the other one not (see drawings reproduced below)—

Genevieve Cowles, CAMOUFLAGE AND CRIME: Local Artist Reveals Secrets of Black Magic That Protected Our Ships During World War and Draws Striking Analogy in Hartford Courant (Hartford CT), May 13, 1932—

During the Great War, when England was losing five vessels a day from submarine attacks, an artist named [Norman] Wilkinson invited a system of painted blots on ships called “dazzle camouflage” that actually worked like Black Magic. 

Through his periscope, the enemy U-Boat commander could survey his intended victim far more distinctly than with the naked eye. He had proved his ability by sinking many un-camouflaged ships. But when ships appeared painted with black blots it proved impossible for him to discover under those blots her real shape, and position, and the direction in which she was going.

Deprived of this hitherto available, most necessary information, the commander’s deadly torpedo was fired in vain, and often the submarine itself was sunk in consequence.

Not all the guns in creation could ward off the deadly torpedo when accurately fired at an unforeseen moment from an unseen quarter under the sea. This menacing problem, which no amount of force alone could successfully combat was solved by intelligence.

The artists, by using paint in scientific designs of optical illusions, saved the allied ships, without which our troops could never had reached France, or even engaged in winning the war.

Out of 12,000 ships camouflaged by Americans, we lost only nine. 

Only those who knew, or could guess, the laws of optical illusion used in these dazzle designs could see through them. It made not the slightest difference in facing these deceptions whether one were a villain or a saint, a patriot or a traitor, a friend or foe, one could surely be deluded if one did not know the laws of the deceptions.…

As an officially trained member of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps during the Great War, I have received from the government permission to divulge the information that I possess. 

Mr George H. Rock, chief of the Navy Department Bureau of Construction and Repair, Washington DC, in a recent letter to me wrote: “While at that time (during the World War) the information was held as confidential, since the war it has not been so regarded, and there is no reason known to this bureau why you should not use such information as you may have as to camouflage practice during the war.” Also, Mr William Andrew Mackay, New York camoufleur of the marine service under which I was trained, has written to me saying: “You can rest assured that you will be given all assistance by this office.”

Let us begin by examining the accompanying drawing of a war camouflage ship seen approximately at the point of attack. In order to take affect, the torpedo should be fired at a two-point, or between a two-point and a three-point view. 

That is, one should fire when she was coming head on, showing the prow and a little of one side, or else retreating, showing the stern and part of one side.

The low visibility system of camouflage, so successful on land, and successful in a fog at sea, proved useless in bright daylight on a quiet sea, because the lights and shadows on the angles of the prow and stern, and especially on the deck houses, would betray the position of the ship and the direction in which she was going. If the U-boat commander could estimate correctly one single rectangle on the victim ship, he could sink her.

The camoufleur solved this problem first by painting sold black blots over these telltale angles. Later on he discovered that more or less dark bands or bars or spots would serve as well as solid blacks.…

The submarine commander was only allowed seven seconds for each observation by rolling waves that at such intervals obscured his vision through his periscope.…

Now compare this camouflaged ship drawing with an exact tracing of this identical ship in this identical position, also reproduced here, and you will see that she is not traveling in either direction that she seems to have when camouflaged, and the torpedo will not strike where intended.…

RELATED LINKS

Optical science meets visual art 

Disruption versus dazzle 

Chicanery and conspicuousness 

Under the big top at Sims' circus

American Camouflage Artist | William Andrew Mackay

Full text online essay on William Andrew Mackay

Note: The essay and web page to which this blogpost links have been substantially revised (enlarged and refined) since they were initially posted.—RB

Above Earlier this morning, we posted an online essay on the contributions to World War I ship camouflage of American muralist William Andrew Mackay. He was one of the most prominent and prolific of the artist-camoufleurs of that era, but his involvement has never been fully explained.

His camouflage experiments should be of particular interest to vision scientists, since his methods were partly derived from the color vision research of physicists James Clerk Maxwell and Ogden Rood. But art historians should also find it of relevance, since his research was related to the development of Neo-Impressionism. More>>>

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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)

Camouflage Artist | Frank H. Schwarz

Oregon Statehouse Rotunda (1938) Frank H. Schwarz

Frank Henry Schwarz was born in New York City on June 21, 1894, but his family moved to Chicago, where he eventually studied at the Chicago Art Institute. He survived by working as a bus boy in a restaurant, while his father returned to New York, where he worked as a waiter.

During World War I, Schwarz joined the American Army Camouflage Corps, where he served with other artists, among them Barry Faulkner, Sherry Edmundson Fry, and Robert Lawson. He remained with that unit in France, until, at the war’s end, he was stricken by pneumonia. While regaining his health, he settled in New York, where he set up a painting studio in Greenwich Village (as did several others from the same camouflage unit).

In the summer of 1921, Schwarz was featured in an article in The New York Times, titled PAINTER FACING EVICTION WHEN PAINTING WINS PRIX DE ROME. The article reported that, at age twenty-six and penniless, Schwarz had been only minutes away from being evicted from his NYC two-room studio when, to his surprise, a letter arrived telling him that he had won the Prix de Rome, among the most coveted prizes in art. In the weeks that followed, his success was featured nationwide in various newspapers. The painting for which he won the award was A Tribute to Heroism.

In 1926, he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Three years later, one of his works was acquired by the Brooklyn Museum.

Among his most enduring works are a number of murals, commissioned for architectural sites. He may have turned to murals as a result of his wartime connection to fellow camoufleur and muralist Barry Faulkner. In 1938, Schwarz and Faulkner were among the primary muralists for the Oregon State Capitol in Salem. It was Schwarz who painted two large murals for the building’s rotunda, the dome interior, and a mural in the Senate chamber. Later, Schwarz completed mural commissions for other buildings in the US and Canada.

He died on September 5, 1951, in Mount Vernon, New York.

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Faulkner, Barry, and Frank H. Schwarz. “Three Murals in the Capitol.” Oregon Historical Quarterly 41: 2 (June, 1940), 132-136.

Note  A slightly different version of this biographical note has also been contributed to askART.com.

Reuterdahl Camouflage Mural in Missouri Capitol

Mural in Missouri State Capitol by Henry Reuterdahl (1921)

Swedish-born American artist Henry Reuterdahl (1871-1925) was a prominent albeit mysterious participant in World War I ship camouflage. We’ve talked about him in earlier blogposts, including a brief discussion about The Navy Guarded the Road to France, his mural on display in the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City. 

There is an infomative overview of this and the other artworks in this building in a book by Bob Priddy, titled The Art of the Missouri Capitol: History in Canvas, Bronze, and Stone, including a vivid photograph of Reuterdahl’s mural (shown above). Thanks to Steve Sitton, administrator at the Thomas Hart Benton Home and Studio State Historic Site, for calling our attention to this.

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NAVAL PAINTING IN MISSOURI CAPITOL. Reuterdahl’s Portrayal of Missourians’ Encounter With U-Boat Installed in State House. St. Louis Post-Dispatch. March 21, 1921, p. 17—

JEFFERSON CITY—The first mural painting of the navy to be placed in a State Capitol in the United States is being installed on the south side of the east wing of the State Capitol this week by Lieutenant-Commander Henry Reuterdahl USNRF, as part of the decoration of the Capitol.

This painting, on which Reuterdahl has spent more than four months, portrays the work of Missourians in the navy during the recent war in handling troop convoys.

The center foreground is the deck of the destroyer Wainwright, commanded during the war by Capt. J.K. Taussig of St. Louis. The destroyer is in action against a submarine, her gun crews being busy, while other sailors prepare to launch “Ash Can” depth bombs on the U-boat. Capt. Taussig, glasses focussed on the enemy craft, is shown prominently near one of the guns, watching the effect of a shot from which the smoke and flash are about the gun muzzle. A photograph of this painting was published in the Post-Dispatch rotogravure section January 9.

Higher up on the picture are the Wadsworth, commanded by Capt. Poteet; the Orizaba, Capt. R.D. White; the Finland, Commander Graham, all of Missouri, and the New Orleans, Cleveland, Kansas and Susquehanna, all commanded by Missourians.

Wartime Camouflage Shows

These ships, steaming in convoy formation, are shown in their wartime camouflage, just as they actually appeared, the lines of the vessels, the camouflage designs and other details having been copied by Reuterdahl, from the war models of the navy and loaned for the preparation of this painting.

The picture is in the brilliant coloring which marks all of the work of Reuterdahl, regarded as one of the leading marine artists.

…Reuterdahl, who is to receive $2500 for his picture, came here in his naval uniform, doffing the gold braid cap and jacket and donning a paint-stained artist’s tunic while giving the final touches he desired to add after the painting had gone on the wall. He expects to finish his work and depart for New York tomorrow.

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Reproduced below is yet another Reuterdahl painting of camouflaged ships (c1919), in which the USS Allen is shown escorting two troopships, the SS France and the USS Mount Vernon, as they cross the Atlantic Ocean. Other ships are also shown.

Painting by Henry Reuterdahl (c1919)

Was Credit Camouflaged? | Roosevelt Murals

William Andrew Mackay booklet on Roosevelt murals (1944)

Here's yet another post about American muralist William Andrew Mackay, who was an early contributor (some say the earliest) to World War I ship camouflage. In previous posts, his name has come up frequently, because of his own achievements but also because of the work that was done by other artists who had attended his NYC camouflage school. Aside from camouflage, at one time he was a widely known muralist, having created prominent works for the Library of Congress, 1939 World's Fair, Minnesota House of Representatives, and others.

As a muralist, perhaps his most famous achievement is a set of massive murals in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. Completed in 1935, the famous murals are 34 feet high and 62 feet wide, covering an area of 5,230 square feet. Mackay died on the street of a heart attack in 1939. In 1944, the museum published a posthumous booklet, written by Mackay and A.A. Canfield of the New York State Department of Public Works, titled The Murals in the Theodore Roosevelt Memorial Hall (NYC: American Museum of Natural History, in which it is twice stated that the murals “were painted by William Andrew Mackay."

More recently, in a process requiring two years to complete, the Roosevelt Rotunda murals were restored and reopened to the public on Roosevelt's birthday, October 27, 2012. In various news reports, the public was reminded that the man who made them was Mackay, described as "a pioneer in the development of ship camouflage in World War I." 

That said, we found it of interest to happen upon a long-forgotten news article titled “’T.R.’ Memorial Murals Painted by Pittsburgher,” published in The Pittsburgh Press, on October 30, 1936—

A former left handed trumpet player from Pittsburgh was the artist who actually painted the murals in the [Roosevelt Rotunda at the] New York State Theodore Roosevelt Memorial…

The man who created the murals, it was discovered today, was Cliff Young, who earned his way through the Art Institute of Pittsburgh by playing a trumpet. He is left handed.

It was not known that Mr. Young had done the work, as the booklets which carry a description of the memorial building have referred only to William Andrew Mackay, winner of the competition held between 25 nationally known artists who submitted sketches.

Responsible for the discovery of the part played by the left-handed trumpeter was Willis Shook, [founder and] director of the art school who stumbled upon his former pupil on a recent trip to New York.

Mr. Mackay directed the execution, employing Mr. Young to do the work, according to Mr. Shook.…

Mr. Young twice painted in his own portrait in the murals, although he hung a beard on his face in order to carry out the scheme of the original designs [as in his self-portrait as Vladimir near the bottom of the mural on Russian history].…

Cliff Young, Figure Drawing Without a Model (1945), p. 42.

With additional sleuthing, we found out that Cliff Young (1905-1985) was a painter and cartoonist who worked for DC Comics during World War II as an illustrator of Green Arrow [Wikipedia article includes one of Cliff Young's covers].

He also wrote two books about learning to draw, Figure Drawing Without a Model (NY: House of Little Books, 1946), and Drawing Drapery from Head to Toe (same publisher, 1947, later reprinted by Dover, 2007).

Originally from Pittsburgh, he studied at the Art Institute of Pittsburgh, Grand Central School of Art, Art Institute of Chicago, National Academy of Design, Carnegie Institute, and Art Students League of New York.

Camoufleurs Gerome Brush and Barry Faulkner

Gerome Brush (n.d.), Busts of Barry Faulkner

Above Two of three plaster busts (date unknown) of New Hampshire muralist (and co-founder of the New York Camouflage Corps) Barry Faulkner (1881-1966) by his friend the sculptor (and ship camouflage designer) Gerome Brush (1888-1954), the son of American painter George de Forest Brush. Recently, I was able to see the actual busts (which, as it turns out, are surprisingly large) when, on a visit to an Abbott H. Thayer and camouflage symposium, I had the fortune to spend some time with Allen Pierce, a descendant of the Brush family and the owner of these sculptures.

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Barry Faulkner (recalling his friendship with Gerome Brush) in his Sketches from an Artist's Life. Dublin NH: William Bauhan, 1973, p. 69—

Gerome was a Personality. His high spirits spread a feast for his friends, a feast of wit and good humor. His character had no ugly traits. He had no formal education, yet with wits as quick as those of a fox, from the talk of his father's distinguished friends he picked much information which he understood and remembered. His talents were versatile; he became a sculptor and painter, and in his last years he wrote several admirable essays on the lives of famous Italian women painters, expressed in an original and exciting form of poetic prose. Our friendship was easy and undemanding; after years of separation we were able to pick it up just where we had left off.

More about Brush and Faulkner

Camouflage Artist | Everit Herter

Herter Brothers cabinet (c1875)

Above An astonishing decorative cabinet, made of ebonized cherry and mixed wood marquetry, circa 1875. It is now in the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. Its creators were the German-born designers Gustave (1830-1898) and Christian Herter (1845-1883), whose design firm in New York was called Herter Brothers.

During the Eisenhower administration, while growing up in the Midwest, we were well aware of the name Herter, because another Christian Herter (1895-1966), a respected American statesmen, was Secretary of State from 1959-1961. That person was the son of an American artist and muralist, named Albert Herter (1871-1950), whose own father had been the earlier Christian Herter, the designer-craftsman.

Although we didn't know it then, the artist Albert Herter had a second older son, a young artist named Everit Albert Herter (1894-1918), who died tragically at the front at Chateau-Thierry in France in World War I. The young Herter was a Harvard graduate, among whose college friends had been the muralist Barry Faulkner (cousin of Abbott H. Thayer) and theatrical designer Homer St. Gaudens (son of Augustus Saint-Gaudens, the most famous sculptor of his time).

Portrait (perhaps a self-portrait) of Everit Herter (n.d.)

When the US Army officially started its Camouflage Corps in 1917, Herter was one of the first to enlist, along with Faulkner, Iowa sculptor Sherry Fry (an Augustus Saint Gaudens protegé), and others whose names I have listed in earlier posts, among them William Twigg-Smith, Valentin di Colonna and Cobb X. Shinn. Saint Gaudens was the officer in charge of the unit, the same unit that published a camp newspaper called The Camoufleur. They trained for several months on the grounds of the American University in Washington DC, then sailed for France in the last few days of December 1917 or the first week of January 1918 (there are conflicting accounts of the departure date).

Until recently we hadn't realized Herter's capabilities as an artist, and still know very little. While it's unfair to assess his potential on the basis of a single painting, we cannot help but be impressed by a work of his in the collection of the Fogg Museum at Harvard. Reproduced below, its title is Portrait of a Young Man in a Brown Shirt (c1913). There is writing on the side that reads: "Study by Everit Herter Harvard Class of 1914 Sergeant Camouflage Corps: [not readable] died in France June 1918." Obviously, the inscription was not added by Herter, but perhaps it was placed there by his teacher, Harvard professor and art theorist Denman W. Ross (1853-1935), whose family gave it to Harvard in 1936.

Everit Herter (1913), Fogg Museum, Harvard

Nor had we realized until recently that Everit Herter had kept a diary during the war, and that a good portion of it can now be accessed online, in M.A. DeWolfe Howe, Memoirs of the Harvard Dead in the War Against Germany. Vol 3. (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press, 1922), pp. 229-247. He was the first of two American camoufleurs to be killed in action at the front (the other being Faulkner's friend Harry Dickinson Thrasher).

There are numerous accounts of Herter's death, given his friends and family ties. A brief report that first appeared in the Harvard Graduates' Magazine. Vol 27 (1918) reads as follows—

Everit Albert Herter, sergeant, 40th Engineers, died of wounds, June 13, 1918. A small body of men had volunteered to camouflage a gun in a position in advance of the front line. Sergeant Herter was the first to go out, and after reaching the appointed place, waited for the rest of the party. The other members were either delayed or were unable to come, and while waiting, Herter was severely wounded by a bursting shell. He tried to make his way back to the lines, but lost consciousness. Finally he was rescued and carried to a hospital, but he never regained consciousness, and died within a few hours.

His family was of course devastated, made more poignant by the fact that Everit and his wife were the parents of two infant sons. In Everit's memory, his painter father gave to the French people a huge, magnificent mural that was installed in the lobby of the Gare de Paris-Est (East railway terminal). It can be accessed on Wikipedia here. In addition, there are other photographs of it and an insightful account of its meaning on a blog called Invisible Paris.

additional sources

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.

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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.

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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