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

Clara Lathrop Strong / New England Camouflage Artist

Above Portrait drawing of British author Aldous Huxley  by Eric Pape, teacher of Clara Lathrop Strong, as published in The Sphere, October 12, 1929. Public domain.

•••

On October 3, 1917, a brief article appeared in The Boston Transcript. The headline read CAMOUFLAGE BY WOMEN: Here Is a Chance for Wily Females to Show the Boches Some New Art Tricks. The full text read as follows—

A project has been launched to organize women artists who may desire instruction in the work ot camouflage, Land has been offered for a camp, and the scheme has the unofficial approval ot the War Department, which is, however, at the present time, unable to spare any men from the first camouflage unlt as instructors. If and when they become avallable, further detalls as to time and place and equipment, etc., will be given out. It is believed that many women artists will embrace the opportunity to use thelr special training in patriotic service of this sort. It is probable that the women would be used only in this country, nevertheless the exigencies of war cannot be foreseen, and preparation along this line is thought to be desirable. We are informed that “there is no age limit,” but applicants should be strong and active, and should have had training in landscape, mural or scenic palnting, or in sculpture. All those interested are requested to send thelr names and addresees to Mrs. Clara Strong, Marshfield Hllls, Mass.

Mrs. Clara [née Lathrop] Strong (1883-1955) was a painter, muralist, illustrator, sculptor, and writer. Born in Cambridge MA, she studied in California at Stanford University, and subsequently at Oberlin College in Ohio. After returning to Massachusetts, she studied art in Boston at the Eric Pape School of Art, and in New York with muralist Edwin Blashfield*. She opened her own studio in 1908. A year later, she married a Boston Back Bay surgeon named Seth L. Strong, who had also attended Oberlin, and earned his medical degree at Harvard University in 1913. During the first twelve years of their marriage, they became parents of four children.

In late 1917, a lengthy article appeared in the Chicago Examiner (December 2, p. 29), titled Camouflage the Art of Faking, Throwing Fritz Off the Trail. One of the illustrations was a photograph of Clara Strong, working in her studio. The caption reads: Mrs. C.L. Strong, Who Heads a School for Camouflage. In the closing paragraph, the article states:

Mrs. Clara Lothrop [sic] Strong, of Marshfield Hills, Mass., a well-known New England artist, has formed a school for painting camouflage.

Two other articles claim that Mrs. Strong “was the honorary head of the women’s camouflage war workers during the war” (Boston Traveler, July 13, 1921), and that “She became nationally famous as the originator of the camouflage camp, and in the World War was an instructor in the art of wartime camouflage” (Boston Herald, February 16, 1923).

Her participation in the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps during WWI is confirmed by an article in the New York Times (July 12, 1918), titled CAMOUFLAGE THE RECRUIT: Women’s Service Corps Redecorate the Landship in Union Square. She was one of twenty-four women who participated in that project.

The time frame is confusing, but the same 1921 article in the Boston Traveler states that Clara Lathrop Strong, her husband and their children lived in Bangkok, Thailand, during 1918. During that assignment, her husband was in charge of the Royal Medical College there. It provided Clara Strong with the opportunity to become acquainted with the traditional art of that country. In an issue of the Boston Advertiser (February 19, 1922), she is said to have made sculptures that were derivative of certain ceremonial dances, and to have been allowed to paint inside the Royal Palace, “where no foreigner and especially no woman, had previously been permitted.”

However, during this same time period, there are other news articles that indicate that the marriage of Seth and Clara Strong was disentegrating. On the front page of a 1922 issue of the Boston American (November 15), there was a portrait photograph of Clara Lathrop Strong for an article with the headline: SCULPTRESS ACCUSED BY HER HUSBAND: WIFE TRIED TO KILL HIM SAYS DOCTOR. The husband claimed that, as early as 1919, when he refused his wife’s request that the family move to New York, she assaulted him, and threatened to harm their youngest child. He also claimed that she had attempted to kill him by turning on the gas jets in his Boston office. All of which Clara Lathrop Strong denied.

The husband filed for divorce and petitioned for custody of their children. “I loved my husband dearly,” she said, “until he brought this suit against me.” She countersued for custody, and when the marriage was terminated, she was granted “separate support and custody of her four children.” All this was headlined in the press, which must have been unbearable for everyone involved.

As if that were not tragic enough, another incident took place in 1934, coincident with the Great Depression. This apparently had to do with the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA), a government assistance agency that provided assistance to artists. In an article in The Boston Herald (November 21), Clara Strong is quoted as describing herself as “nearly destitute.” 

She had applied for a painting commission but was rejected on the grounds that “relief officials told her that she seemed to have sufficient means to live on.” In anonymous protest, she entered a mural in an annual exhibition—using a pseudonym—in which she satirized “the ERA and ‘sacred cows’ who have been given ERA commissions.” When the artwork was rejected, she protested. Living “modestly” in a temporary residence, she said that “she has had to take her son out of college and has sold her antique furniture as proof of her qualifications for help from the state and government.”

That’s the extent of our findings so far. A distressingly complex story, and no doubt unexplained in many regards.

•••

*It’s interesting that in 1917, when the US entered WWI, a group of East Coast artists, headed by Barry Faulkner and Sherry E. Fry, formed a civilian organization called the American Camouflage Corps. It anticipated the wartime need for skilled artists to serve as army camoufleurs. The chairman of the group was Clara Strong’s teacher, muralist Edwin Blashfield.

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

from art to camouflage to the demolition of his home

Walter K. Pleuthner at age 82

Walter Pleuthner's WWI ship camouflage scheme

When Walter Karl Pleuthner registered for the draft in White Plains NY on September 12, 1918, he was officially listed—and signed the verification—as Walter Charles Pleuthner. That’s odd. Elsewhere, I’ve seen him listed as Walter Carl Pleuthner. There is no reason to assume that these were different people, because his birthdate is cited correctly as January 24, 1885. He was 33 years old at the time of his draft registration, and was self-employed as an artist and architect, living on Scarsdale Avenue, in Scarsdale NY.

Pleuthner was born in Buffalo NY. When as young as five years old, he began to take art lessons at what is now the Buffalo AKG Art Museum. His watercolors were first exhibited in New York City in 1903. Three years later he moved to New York, where he worked in his uncle’s law firm, while taking art courses at the Art Students League and the Academy of Design. Among the instructors he studied with were Frank DuMond and F. Luis Mora. When the Armory Show (the infamous International Exhibition of Modern Art) took place in New York in 1913, he was the youngest artist to have his work included.

Later, as an architect, he was primarily known for designing homes for wealthy clients. In 1909, he married Clara Riopel Von Bott, a concert singer, and designed a spacious stately Tudor home for them in Scarsdale. It was of sufficient distinction that his full color painting of the property’s entrance gate, with a view of the home in the background, was featured on the cover of a 1909 issue of American Homes and Gardens magazine. In the magazine’s interior pages was a full page feature on the home, with exterior photographs, floor plans, and marginal notes.

Magazine Cover / Walter Pleuther / 1909

Magazine interior featuring Pleuthner home / 1909

Pleuthner is listed as having been a member of the Society of Independent Artists, as well as of a New York group called American Camouflage, organized by Barry Faulkner and Sherry Edmundson Fry (for the purpose of becoming proficient at army camouflage) in anticipation of the US declaration of war in 1917.

At some point, as a civilian, he also became involved in ship camouflage. We know this because there is a photograph of a painted wooden ship silhouette, credited to him, that was published in March 1918 (in black and white only) as part of a lengthy research report by the Submarine Defense Association. After his scheme was tested by camouflage researchers at Eastman Kodak Laboratories in Rochester NY, his camouflage proposal was not selected for actual use.

Pleuthner’s wife died from a heart ailment in 1957. He lived for thirteen additional years. His newspaper obituary reads: “His techniques ranged from American impressionism to the unusual use of found objects. He wrote humorous anecdotes and philosophical essays. An architect by profession, he created many of the Gothic and Tudor style homes in Scarsdale and neighboring towns.” He died on December 2, 1970.

The Pleuthners had no children. After his wife’s death, he continued to live alone in their large residence in Scarsdale (although it isn’t entirely clear if this was the original house from 1909, or perhaps a later equivalent from 1920). What is certain is that he had difficulty in maintaining the house. In 1963, it caught on fire, but was not structurally damaged. Soon after, it caught on fire on two other occasions, followed by vandalism and thefts. Concerns were increasingly voiced by area residents, fire safety officials and the village board. Some people urged that the house be condemned and dismantled “as a danger.” This debate provoked a longtime Pleuthner friend and former neighbor to publish an objection in the Scarsdale Inquirer on November 22, 1967.

“We all know Walter’s eccentricities,” the letter to the editor said, “and it is easy to criticize them. With less formal education than some, Walter, through his own efforts, became an excellent architect. He built expensive and admirable houses as far away as Pennsylvania and several in Westchester County…”

The request to raze the Pluethner’s home should be denied, the writer urged. “Walter has suffered several serious misfortunes and since Mrs. Pleuthner’s death, he has mostly lived alone with his paintings and sculpture. His house has suffered damage from fires but appears structurally sound. He is now an old man.”

One cannot help but wonder why Pleuthner was regarded as “eccentric,” even among his defenders and friends. One early indication may be a 1941 news article titled “Tipsy House” in the American Builder magazine. 

Tipsy House: No hurricane; just a bad spill

 

Pleuthner ran into unforessen difficulties, the article reported, “with a model house he bought, cut into two sections and tried to move to another site. After a lot of figuring, he started out at dawn one morning with the first section on a big trailer. Things went all right until they rounded a sharp curve on a hill. At that point the house got tipsy, rolled off the trailer and landed on its side. The house wasn’t damaged, but it got Architect Pleuthner into all sorts of trouble with various people, including the Traffic Department, who objected to having a main highway blocked. Thousands of people who had inspected the house [earlier] when it was known as the ‘Home for Better Living,’ sponsored by Westchester Lighting Company, were intrigued by the sight ot the house, complete with shutters, slate roof and equipment, laying on its side by the road, where it stayed for several days.”

But the straw that eventually broke the authorities’ back was the increasingly disheveled state of his large self-built Tudor home. At the time he built the house, we are told in an article in Progressive Architecture magazine, it “was no more pixyish than many another in the high Eclectic period, and was distinguished only by having true half-timber construction, a massive braced frame with brick nogging. Loving handmade things and solid workmanship, he had the house put together by craftsmen who used a minimal amount of millwork and ready-sawn lumber. One of the timbers in the living room is a heavy stick from the privateer Hornet of War of 1812 fame. Originally, the house reflected in a conventional way Pleuthner’s triple artistic role as architect, painter…and sculptor, as fragments of old ironwork and woodwork and paintings accumulated on the walls. The great living room was the rehearsal room of the Wayside Players, an amateur group that included Robert Benchley, Dorothy Parker, and the cartoonist Rollin Kirby. At some point, the cultured clutter to be expected in an artist’s house passed over into whimsy, and Pleuthner decided to work on the walls, ceilings, floors, and furnishings of the various interiors. The kitchen at one period was transformed into an Italian garden. Floorboards were painted to imitate polychromed tiles. Other floors were carved out and inlaid with mosaic. A bathroom scale had the outlines of two feet painted on the platform, while the dial became a screaming baby face. Unpleasant book bindings were painted white, with code words daubed on the spines in red. An automobile hood became a canopy over the entrance to a summer house. And more and more odds and ends were added inside and out. In 1963, the house caught fire, but its substantial construction saved it. …the house is now in sad shape. The authorities claim that it is unsafe, and want to tear it down, but Pleuthner is confident that he can restore it. This winter, the house was leaky, drafty, and uninhabitable, but Pleuthner is already experimenting with the textural effects created on the floor by the latest fire.”

Pleuthner home interior in 1968

 

When that article appeared in 1968, Walter Pleuthner was 82 years old. His home was condemned and soon after demolished near the end of that year. When he died two years later, he was listed as residing at a nursing home in White Plains.

SOURCES

• Cover and “A Handmade House, Walter Pleuthner, Architect,” in American Homes and Gardens. Vol IV No 6, June 1909, p. 78.
• “Tipsy House” in American Builder 1941-09: Vol 63 Issue 9, p. 87.
• Letters to the Editor, Harold A. Herriet, “Defends Walter Pleuthner” in Scarsdale Inquirer, Vol XLIV No 47, November 22, 1967.
• “Dwellings: The Rationales in their Design” in Progressive Architecture, May 1968.
• “Walter K. Pleuthner” [obituary], in Scarsdale Inquirer. Vol 52 No 49, December 10, 1970.

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.

Everett C. Hammond / WWI Boston-area camoufleur

Until a few days ago, I had never heard of a Boston-area artist named Everett C. Hammond, who served as a camoufleur during World War I. While described in newspapers at the time as a “portrait painter” and “well-known local artist,” his artistic expertise seems questionable if judged by the lackluster quality of the single drawing found so far. Reproduced above, it was made while he was serving as a US Army camoufleur in France, and was included as part of a letter to his sister in Boston (as described below in this post). At the time he made this drawing, he appears to have had little training in art—it is amateur at best.

•••

CORP HAMMOND TELLS OF CAMOUFLAGE WORK, in Boston Evening Globe, February 12, 1919, p. 9—

Corp. Everett C. Hammond, 1st Army Camouflage Service, a Cambridge man and well-known local artist, called at the local army headquarters today for final orders and to pay his respects to [Major] General [Clarence Ransom] Edwards [ranked last in his class at West Point in 1883].

Corp. Hammond went over seas with the 101st Engineers. He was a member of the old 1st Corps of Cadets when it changed to the engineer regiment. When he was overseas a short time, some one in authority learned that he was quite an artist, or rather “that he could paint” and he was shifted to the Camouflage School for further training in natural colors, etc. Then he was assigned to active duty on the fighting fronts, and went through every campaign. He, with others, would lay long stripes of burlap on the ground and paint them so that it would appear like grass or a natural science, when it was stretched over a battery of artillery that was hammering away at the enemy.

He was in every battle of the famed 26th Division [known as the Yankee Division, as commanded by General Edwards], although his official headquarters at all times was at Dijon. He declared that it quite an exploit, and certainly a dangerous and thrilling one, to first paint and then erect the disguises for the guns in the most active sectors.

He is the first of the camouflage men to report to the local offices, and his flaming yellow sleeve designation [a chameleon emblem], underneath a big blue A, excited curiosity.

•••

BOSTON ARTIST AS CAMOUFLEUR / E.C. Hammond Had Narrow Escape While Hiding Guns With Brush, in Boston Sunday Advertiser and American, March 1919, p. W-7—

More camouflage!

If the war has taught us anything, it has certainly acquainted us thoroughly with the art of camouflage. First it was used In concealing batteries, then to foil the U-boats, and finally came to peaceful pursuits, such as making certain things appear in a somewhat different light than might be otherwise construed—especially the truth.

Our story deals entirely with the first phase of the art—making raging, destructive batteries appear like harmless and aesthetic spots of nature. Something like the demon behind the man with the smiling face.

But now hear a real camouflage artist tell of bona fide camouflage. Listen to descriptions of this art in its original element, and incidentally a few other experiences of this expert camoufeur.

Boston Portrait Painter
By way of introduction, our artist is Corporal Everett C. Hammond. A Boston portrait painter. The war afforded him an opportunity to transfer his peaceful activity to a more fiery environment and he was quick to take advantage of it—enlisting two days after this country declared war. He has just returned to his home in Cambridge—with a thorough training in camouflage, but with an utter ignorance of "Camouflage."

His dally duties perfected him in the former art, but his schooling in the latter has been sadly neglected owing to the association with many clean, manly fellows, whose knowledge on that subject was meagre.

Hammond was among the first camoufleurs to be chosen by the government for this important work abroad. His highly developed training in done colors and natural features of landscapes qualified him for this branch of service with such men as [Homer] Saint-Gaudens, [F. Earl] Christy and [Barry] Faulkner, modern artists of wide popularity.

Was at Seicheprey
He was first with the 101st Engineers, with whom he served at the battle of Seicheprey [on April 20, 1918] and later with the 40th Engineers. Shortly before the battle of Seicheprey his company was engaged in constructing a camouflaged machine gun emplacement which they had half completed when the Boche shelling began. They were forced to abandon this work hurriedly, but not before two of their number had been killed and several wounded. After returning they found this position had been effectively shelled.

Hammond was later placed in charge of the camouflage work of the 130th Field Artillery, which used 75’s and 135mm guns. This unit was particularly active in the Toul sector between Gezencourt and Martincourt.

700 Women Helpers
About 700 French women were engaged during the war in making camouflage materials for the American government. This was done in Nancy and Dijon. Burlap was used principally and was prepared by a coloring process in which numerous natural colors were used. After being dried it was cut into uneven pieces and tied on chicken wire, having the appearance of the vibration and natural color of a grass field.

The colors were selected according to the particular environment, and when the structure was erected about a battery the blend served to conceal it from the enemy.

Each battery occupied an area about 100 feet long and 25 feet wide. This was entirely covered with camouflage raised to a height of twenty feet from the ground. It was done by means of posts surrounding the area at a distance of ten feet apart. These in turn were covered by the vast stretch of burlap colored according to the fields. At a distance this looked like a natural bank. The same was true from above and was indiscernible to the aviator's eye.

Camouflage While You Wait
The extensive operations were not carried on during a quick drive. In such case all guns carried forward their network consisting of burlap and fishnet. The latter was often covered with branches, leaves, etc. In quick drives a gun could be camouflaged in about thirty minutes. Along the established lines it required weeks and often months to construct the camouflage shelter.

The position of batteries were determined by the amount of natural protection, particularly near banks. They were often placed near brush, the effect of the shrubbery being carried out.

Hammond had several narrow escapes, among which was an incident when returning from the inspection of a camouflaged battery. Enemy guns wore searching out the territory, and as he crossed a barren field that section suddenly became the center of the foe's fire. He quickly sprang to a shell hole and was astonished when a dog, evidently a company mascot, came close to his heels. Both remained there until the guns ceased firing.

Another Narrow Escape
Later while he was discussing the camouflage of a certain battery with a comrade a large fragment of shell whizzed by his ear.

•••

SENDS PENCIL SKETCH OF CHAPLAIN EDWARDS, in Boston Post, April 21 1918, p. 12—

Miss Gladys E. Hammond of 241 Upham Road, Cambridge, received a letter yesterday from her brother, Everett C. Hammond of A Company, 101st Engineers, which contained a pencil sketch of Chaplain Edwards• addressing the men of the regiment before their departure for the front.

“My brother wrote,” said Miss Hammond, “that the engineers have been busy building miles of barbed wire entanglements, doing the work at night. He said that the work would keep the men busy for a long time. This letter was written March 12.”

The sketch shows Chaplain Edwards at the front of the colors, addressing the men. A line under the sketch, quoted as Chaplain Edwards’ words, reads: “I am going to commence the service this morning by reading a poem.”

•This appears to be an error, since I have yet to find any reference to a chaplain named Edwards in the Yankee Division, whereas the unit’s commander was Major General C.R. Edwards. Perhaps the two have been confused.

Theatrical special effects | Thayer's disappearing man

Abbott H. Thayer holding one of his duck decoys (upsidedown)

Until recently, I had not heard of Percy MacKaye (1875-1956), an American poet and playwright. That should come as no surprise, since (according to Michael J Mendelsohn in his essay by on “Percy Mackaye’s Dramatic Theories”), he “is rarely mentioned today.” But in “the pre-Freudian, pre-O’Neill days of American drama, he was a major figure.”

A Harvard graduate, MacKaye traveled and lived in Europe from 1897 to 1900, then returned to the US to teach at a private school in New York. In 1904, he moved to Cornish NH (ten miles from Plainfield), where he was allied with the Cornish Art Colony, which included such prominent artists as Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Maxfield Parrish, Daniel Chester French, Paul Manship, George de Forest Brush, and Barry Faulkner.

Sixty-five miles southeast of Cornish is Dublin NH, at the foot of Mount Monadnock. At the time, there was considerable contact between the artists in Cornish and Dublin, in part because the latter was the location of the disheveled home and studio of artist-naturalist Abbott Handerson Thayer (the so-called “father of camouflage”). Faulkner was Thayer’s cousin,  Brush was his closest friend, and some of the artists mentioned above were his long-time associates.

Only lately have I learned that Thayer and Percy MacKaye were also acquainted, possibly well-acquainted, and, in 1906, they made an attempt to collaborate on the “special effects” for the staging of Edward H. Sothern and Julia Marlowe’s 1907 production of MacKaye’s play about Joan of Arc, titled Jeanne d’Arc. The playscript was dedicated to Augustus Saint-Gaudens.

In the script, Jeanne d’Arc reveals that she has been visited by St Michael the Archangel. In a couple of scenes, “the glorified form of St Michael” appears as an apparition, then disappears. At a certain point, the ghostly form of Charles the Great (aka Charlemagne) appears within a stained glass surface, then speaks with the voice of St Michael. Obviously, anyone producing the play would need to decide how to handle these ethereal appearances (and vanishing acts) of Jeanne's visions of St Michael.

As early as the mid-1890s, Abbott Thayer had been researching, writing about, and devising demonstrations of a natural form of camouflage called countershading (essentially inverse shading). He claimed that it accounted for the prevalence of “white undersides” in the coloration of animals.

Thayer's disappearing duck (as recreated by Fuertes)

Using wooden duck decoys, as seen in the photographs above (or even raw sweet potatoes), he could make solid forms all but vanish in a natural ground surrounding. (In these two photographs, made by Thayer's student, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, a white sheet of paper has been placed behind the duck decoys to make the counter-shaded one visible, on the right.) Scientific audiences were astonished by his outdoor demonstrations of this. He published articles about countershading in scientific journals, and it led to his being invited to European universities to demonstrate and to install exhibitions of the same phenomenon.

Thayer was inept at managing money. But when his discovery of countershading (sometimes known as Thayer’s law) was received so laudably, he began to imagine practical ways by which he and his family could profit. One of his options had to do with theatrical stage effects. Instead of vanishing duck decoys, could countershading be applied to an actor’s skin-toned leotards, and then, by a simple switch of the lights, might the actor disappear?

We know that Thayer actually carried this out because two photographs of the effect have survived (as reproduced below). They are before-and-after photographs of a male artist’s model (a Boston man named Dutton) wearing counter-shaded tights, in the setting of a lighted box. In one, the light is coming from the bottom (contrary to natural lighting), in which case the figure is easily seen. In the other photograph, the light is coming from the top, and the model all but disappears.

Thayer's vanishing actor in counter-shaded leotards

In 1906, as Percy MacKaye was preparing for the premiere of Jeanne d’Arc, he may have reached out to Thayer—more likely Thayer appealed to him—about the possibility of using on-stage countershading as a way to bring about the appearance and disappearance of St Michael. We know this in part because MacKaye described it in Percy MacKaye: A Sketch of His Life with Bibliography of His Works (Cambridge MA: Harvard University, 1922). Here is the passage—

Midwinter, in the little town hall of Dublin NH: a man-model against a dusky curtain: Abbott Thayer, the artist-inventor, intent, excited, testing (in 1906!) his new “camouflage” principles to create a stained-glass vision of Charlemagne for the Sothern-Marlowe production of my play Jeanne d’Arc.

But did their collaborative efforts succeed? The answer is no: In the end, their project came to naught. There are letters from Thayer to MacKaye in the Archives of American Art that record his frantic if genuine efforts to locate appropriate lanterns and to photograph the model in tights. On March 26, 1906, he sent photographs to MacKaye (perhaps the same two reproduced here), saying: “When Dutton got his suit on again, and took his place, the effect was almost as perfect as ever, quite enough without a single retouch (but the lantern’s the thing!)” A full month later, on April 26, he assured MacKaye that he has made “progress, but only that,” and is awaiting a shipment of new and better lanterns, which, he hopefully asserts, “will make a true total invisibility.”

There is apparently more to the story, but the details remain rather murky. In the files of the Archives of American Art, there is another letter to MacKaye (dated May 25), written by Emma Thayer, on behalf of Abbott, her husband. She reveals that Thayer is overwhelmed, and instead—

he has got that gifted young man [his student] Rockwell Kent (whom Abbott wanted before and could not) to do the thing. Abbott has had him up here, and Abbott says he will do it superbly. But to make sure Abbott is having him do the only complicated thing, the St Michael, first and if he has any difficulty he is to telegraph Abbott, and Abbott will go down.

Rockwell Kent is swiftness itself—and having more endurance can do the thing quicker than Abbott, and is masterly and precise in the way he does everything.

Despite such good intentions, Thayer and Kent were not able to provide a final prototype for the Sothern and Marlowe production. “Unable to get [it] together in time,” according to Thayer’s biographer, Nelson C. White, the collaborative experiment concluded “in complete failure.”

Soon after, Thayer came to realize the futility of making a fortune by inventing practical things. As he wrote to his patron, Charles L. Freer (as quoted by White)—

My failure to make my cursed invention suit itself to Sothern’s immediate needs was the eye-opener I need. I had gone on thinking the Thayer family must have the thousands I was to scoop so easily so as to set me free to work. My eyes opened for good and all and although the thing got into such perfected shape that it seems both to me and my patent lawyer destined for success, nothing will divert another thought from my own work [as an artist], which envelops me like the arms of a beloved again…

…P.P.S. The theatre invention is all ready for someone to take up, patent applied for and covered already in four foreign lands. If the right man looms up within a year or two he shall have it. Otherwise, it can go to hell. I am safe cured! 

•••

Updates
The above was posted only three days ago, but I've just found two updates, including one that's especially surprising: (1) From a news article about a talk that Gerald H. Thayer gave in 1921 in Lowell MA (Lowell Sun, January 20) it appears that he showed the lantern slides of the model who vanished in his leotards. In the article, the space in which the man is posed is described as a "piano box" (a box for shipping pianos), set up in the Dublin NH town hall. (2) Today, I found out that the autobiography of psychologist Michael Wertheimer, the son of Gestalt psychologist Max Wertheimer, has been published in Europe. I couldn't resist buying a digital copy, as expensive as it was. When I paged through it, I was completely aghast to discover that Michael's first wife's grandfather (her mother's father) was—you guessed it—Percy MacKaye. See photo below—I do love these hidden links.

Percy MacKaye

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

SALE book bundle / free shipping

 

Camouflage Artist | John Dwight Bridge

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

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

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

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

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

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

J. Dwight Bridge (c1933)

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

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

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

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

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

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

•••

Sources

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

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

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

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

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

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

•••

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)

Frank Lloyd Wright Meets Camoufleur Barry Faulkner

Frank Lloyd Wright poster © Roy R. Behrens (2017)

Above Frank Lloyd Wright's City National Bank and Park Inn Hotel in Mason City Iowa. Poster by Roy R. Behrens (2017).

•••

In the Iowa City Press-Citizen (Iowa City IA), on April 21, 1932 (p. 8), there was an entry in Charles B. Driscoll's column "The World and All," in which he reported on a recent experience in New York with American architect Frank Lloyd Wright. Here's an excerpt—

Recently I attended a delightful party in honor of Frank Lloyd Wright at the studio of Barry Faulkner in East Seventy-Second Street. I found the guest of honor one of the most distinguished gentlemen I have met in moons.

Barry Faulkner's studio? Really. Those who know about the origins of the WWI American Army Camouflage will recognize that name. Faulkner, from New Hampshire, was Abbott H. Thayer's cousin. In collaboration with his friend, Iowa-born sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry,  he co-founded the American Camouflage Corps, comprised of civilian artists and architects.

Driscoll continues—

To Mr. Wright, I ventured to put this question: "Why do your building designs so persistently emphasize the horizontal line?"

I had observed in pictures of the buildings designed by Wright the long roofline, the veranda or porch paralleling the roofline, and other efforts to squelch the vertical.

"Because," he replied, "the horizontal is the restful line, the line of repose and domesticity. It is what we need in this country."

"Then you must not think well of our New York architecture, with its emphasis on the vertical?" I asked.

"Is there architecture in New York?" replied the distinguished guest.

And I went hunting for another sandwich.

Teaching Camouflage | The Real Art of War 1917

Top photo shows painted mural concealing the road

In an earlier blog post, we shared drawings and photographs of the use of perspective Illusions as a means of concealing activity, such as the movement of troops and equipment. These were huge, painted canvas backdrops, probably inspired by the theatrical backdrops in stage settings. They are also not dissimilar from the enormous scenic murals that provided the outdoor backgrounds for Buffalo Bill's Wild West performances, including phony boulders made by simply draping canvas tarps. We've now run into yet another example of the use of forced perspective in World War I. The article, reproduced above, was an unsigned full-page article called TEACHING CAMOUFLAGE, THE REAL "ART" OF WAR, TO AMERICA'S SOLDIERS, published in the St Louis Dispatch (Sunday, July 22, 1917, pp. 9-10). The entire text of the article is reproduced below—

To the German observers this perspective looked just as it had the night before. In reality they were looking at a cleverly painted screen behind which heavy guns were being placed. Drawn from a photograph.

It is the painting cannon, depots, hangars, piles of ammunition, and other war materials to blend with the surrounding landscape and be invisible to aviators. Even a countryside has been transformed so that troops could move behind a screen unknown to the Germans. American painters already have formed an organization to volunteer for service.

CAMOUFLAGE—Humbugging disguise; its main principle is the destruction of outline by paint or other artifice. See Camoufle; Camoufleur.

Such is the made-to-order definition of one of the newest words in our language, put there by the necessities of war. It will not be found in any dictIonary as yet, but it will soon be there in its proper place, precise and up-to-date. The adaptive and imaginative Frenchman coined it; the Britishers were slow to take up this new art of concealing themselves and their equipment from the common enemy. In fact, so much so that their chief protagonist, H. G. Wells, goes after his compatriots in this fashion:

"The principle of breaking the outline does not seem to be fully grasped upon the British front. Much of the painting of guns and tents that one sees is a feeble and useless dabbing or strIping; some of the tents I saw were done in concentric bands of radiating stripes that would on the whole increase their visibility from above. In one place I saw a hangar painted a good gray-green, but surrounded and outlined by white tents. My impression—and it may be quite an unjust one—was that some of our British Colonels misunderstand and dislike camouflage.”

Be that as it may, America is for this now highly developed trick-of-war, brush, tube, palette and all. Two hundred of the foremost artists of New York and other cities have already responded to the call, and when our cannon roll out towards the front they will Iook like the grassy ground, from above; and our hangars and our camps and our depots for munitions and supplies will be peaceful bits of meadowland or forest, as viewed from the German aeros circling the blue; a tarpaulin covering a pile of big shells lyIng in a roadway will have the dust of the road and the green of its edges reproduced upon it—our army is for the camouflage, first, last and all the time!

Sherry E. Fry and Barry Faulkner, two New York artists who were the recipients of the American prize to Rome. were the prime movers in the American camouflage. They enlisted the aid of several others—Walter Hale, Edwin Blashfield, J. Alden Weir and men of similar distlnction and called a meeting. The American Academy of Design went in, and the Architectural League, followed by the Society of Illustrators and the Society of Scene Painters. Mr. Blashfield was made chairman and Mr. Fry secretary. Then Washington was notified, and an appreciative letter returned from the office of the Chief of Staff.

A battalion of four companies of the camouflage Is tentatively proposed for each field army of from four to six divisions. Each company will consist of a Captain of camouflage, with three or four Lieutenants, eight or 10 Sergeants, 15 to 20 Corporals and the remainder privates. Its members wlll be put on a strictly military basis as to pay and allowances. A committee of the War College Division is now studying camouflage with a view to making definite recommendations to the Secretary of War. In the meantime the New York volunteer artists have been asked to submit technical details as to material and functions.

Abbott Thayer of Dublin, N.H., was the fIrst person ever to take up the art of concealment when he began the study of the protective coloring of animals 25 years ago. He noted that such beasts as the zebra and okapi were parts of the landscape at a few yards distance and he evolved the prlnciple that the breaking or outline was the destruction of visibility.

Little was thought of camouflage at the onset of the present big conflict. There were white kid gloves—fatal targets for German snipers—and waving plumes; the burnished cuirass and the pennoned lance. Then the two contending lines dug themselves in and locked horns. Concealment became everything—concealment from the aero with the telescopic eye; from the artillery observation station, binocular-eyed; from the practiced glance of the sharpshooter and the keen vision of the patrols. French artists in the ranks busied themselves; a new branch of the art military was born—camouflage.

Today it is highly developed. There are two branches, invisibility and imitation. A supply train may look like a row of cottages; that is imitation. A screen tops a great gun so that the green of the screen blends with the grass of the meadow; that is invisibility. And there Is a third offshoot—the art of making compelling replicas of camps, guns, piles of supplies, trenches, ammunition depots and the like, which are not bonafide at all, but the aero man thinks they are and wastes his bombs and energy at attacking nothlng worthwhile.

Such is the great game of hocus-pocus. The French, grasping the idea of the zebra’s stripes and the leopard’s spots, paint their tents in map-like shapes of strong green and bright yellow. At short distances the objects so painter are completely swallowed up in the landscape. An airman will have to fly dangerously low to spy out the trick.

French women work zealously at camouflage—“a tip to American women now drilling in khaki, utterly useless,” says one officer of the American unit. They weave countless square yards of a special open green fabric out of rushes, which can be stretched between poles, or spread out on roofs of supply depots, or on sheds with extreme rapidity.

“We propose to makes ours,” says Mr. Fry, “of American chicken wire fencing or grillage. This will give us a substantial background in which to weave whatever green substance we need to blend with the particular landscape in hand.”

Some great feats of camouflage have been pulled off in the past few months by the clever French poilu-camoufleurs. It was necessary that a large force of troops be moved along a road swept by German artillery at the first sign of anything doing. In a snug place of concealment behind the lines the artists painted on a screen that entire stretch of exposed roadway, with its background, as if it were to be a scene on the stage. Then in the night it was mounted on piles on the side of the road towards the enemy, so that when day dawned the German saw nothing extraordinary—there was the familiar road, as of the day before, wholly barren of human movement. But behind the screen along that road thousands and thousands of French soldiers were quietly marching to take their new positions, a water cart rolling along every 100 yards between the companies to keep down the dust.

Another time the German positions commanded a railway track far into the distance behind the French lines. That whole track, signals, rails and ties, and the tress that fenced in the line and hills on the horizon, were all painted on a wide screen and set up in the night across a village street which was needed. The enemy never found out the trick.

It is no safe occupation, this camouflage. The camoufleur, to achieve the right perspective, must take flights over his objectives. He must set up his whimsies at the most exposed points. Aero and auto and motor cycle must be used by him to get about, nor can he carry weapons of offense while he works. With everyone else, he must take a sporting chance.

Already we see a little of the new art in New York. One army tug down the bay is painted a dull gray, with black horizontal wave lines all over it, hull, cabin, pilot house and all. Army motorcycles are painted olive drab, with maroon stripes. The official automobiles that whisk around the machine guns are similarly colored.

Gladys Thayer | Daughter of Abbott Handerson Thayer

Abbott H. Thayer, Gladys (c1915).

Above Abbott Handerson Thayer, Gladys (c1915). Oil on canvas. Original is in the collection of the Memphis Brooks Museum of Art.

•••

Gladys Thayer (also known as Gladys Thayer Reasoner) was born in Woodstock CT on July 17, 1886. Her parents were Abbott Handerson Thayer (1849-1921) a well-known American painter and naturalist, and Catherine (Kate) Bloede Thayer (1846-1891), who was descended from a family of accomplished German writers, scientists and political reformers. There were five children in the Thayer family, two of whom, the second and third, died while still in infancy. Those who lived to be adults were Mary (1876-?), Gerald (1883-1935) and Gladys.

Shortly after Gladys’ birth, a friend of the family reported that “[Abbott] Thayer is boiling over with happiness of a healthy girl baby and all goes well in the Thayer household.” At the same time, Kate’s father’s health began to fail and he died in May 1888. Kate Thayer lapsed into a severe depression (referred to then as melancholia), and was hospitalized for extended treatment. Over time, her condition worsened and she died in 1891. A few months later, Thayer married a family friend, Emmeline Buckingham Beach, who had assisted the family for years, and whom the children called “Aunt Addie.”

Gladys Thayer grew up in what has been described as an “eccentric” or unconventional household. She and her siblings were kept out of school, for fear of being exposed to contagious illnesses (not unreasonable at the time). Their “home-schooled” education was a rich combination of daily activities, centered on classical reading, writing, art, music, overseas travel, nature studies and enlivened dinner discussions. It was supplemented by modeling for their father, and in other ways assisting him as he took on commissions from wealthy art patrons.

A central component, shared by everyone in the family, was an insatiable interest in animals (some of which were taken in as exotic house pets). Abbott Thayer “loved animals and each family dog seemed to take a scarcely less important place than the humans,” Gladys recalled of her father. “We had countless happy times with him, and wood walks and twilight fires stand out among the happiest.”

In his autobiography, book publisher George Palmer Putnam II describes his youthful friendships with Gerald Handerson Thayer (an artist and naturalist) and Rockwell Kent (a Thayer student). He visited Dublin briefly in his late teens, and he recalls that Gladys (known as Galla) was “a fragrant girl with a special beauty all her own.” He fell in love with her and they briefly dreamed of marriage. But “the idyll did not materialize,” because his parents sent him overseas, “and by the time I returned, Galla sensibly thought better of it.” He later married the aviator Amelia Earhart, who was also on occasion a visitor to Dublin.

As did all the Thayer children, Gladys studied drawing and painting with her father, and also no doubt profited from the presence of students and apprentices, among them Kent, Richard Merryman, Barry Faulkner, Louis Agassiz Fuertes, and the sons of William James, named William Jr. (Billy) and Alexander (Alec). Gladys contributed to the illustrations that were published in Abbott and Gerald’s early, influential book on animal camouflage, as did Kent, Merryman and Aunt Addie. It was titled Concealing coloration in the animal kingdom: an exposition of the laws of disguise through color and pattern (1909). Gerald is deservingly listed as the book’s author, but in truth his father was in charge, with assistance from others as needed.

As Gladys reached adulthood, her father encouraged her to exhibit her drawings, pastels and paintings. In February 1906, her work was featured with that of her father at the Macbeth Gallery in New York. Her most accomplished single work may be a portrait of her father that dates from 1907 or shortly thereafter. He wrote notes to the gallery owner and art dealers, encouraging them to show her work, which typically consisted of still-lifes and landscapes. Occasionally her work was shown at Knoedler Gallery, Vose Galleries of Boston, and Grand Central Galleries. The reviews were politely supportive.

As Abbott Thayer aged, his mental and physical health declined. He admitted to being susceptible to what today is known as bipolar disorder or manic-depressive episodes. He described this as the “the Abbott pendulum,” in which his moods would fluctuate between “all-wellity” at one extreme and “sick disgust” at the other. Near the end of his life, he was assisted in his studio by three apprentices, Henry O’Connor (1891-1975) and Frederick Rhodes Sisson (1893-1962) from Boston, and David O. Reasoner, an Indiana-born artist who had worked for the US Shipping Board as a civilian camouflage artist during WWI.

In his final months, Abbott Thayer was progressively disabled by strokes. According to Gladys, it was primarily Reasoner who attended to Thayer’s needs and “toward the end did little besides take care of him.” The frequency of the strokes increased and he died on May 29, 1921.

Throughout the span of this ordeal, Gladys Thayer and David Reasoner had become a couple, and, about ten days after Abbott’s death, they were married on June 6, 1921. In subsequent years, they became the parents of four children, Allen (who would die at age twenty in a wartime training accident), Jean (portrait painter Jean Reasoner Plunket), Peggy and Richard. In 1924, the family moved to Woodstock, New York, an artists’ colony in the Catskill Mountains. For the next decade, David Reasoner was associated with the Woodstock Country Club, while he also worked as manager of the Woodstock Playhouse.

Throughout these years, Gladys continued to paint and to exhibit her work on occasion, but rarely at prominent galleries. In the fall of 1932, thirty-one of her artworks were exhibited for two weeks at the Woodstock Country Club Tavern, and a selection of her flower paintings were shown at the Grand Central Art Gallery in New York in January 1935.

Beginning in the spring of 1937, for about three years, the Reasoner family was almost nomadic. They traveled across the country by station wagon, often camping out, and living intermittently at various locations in California (San Diego, Point Loma, Santa Barbara, Montecito, and Santa Monica). In 1940, after David Reasoner’s father died, the family moved back to his hometown, Upland, Indiana, to care for his ailing mother.

The U.S. entered WWII at the end of 1941. U.S. ship camouflage experts knew that Gladys’ father and her brother Gerald had informally advised the Allies on camouflage during WW I. Since David Reasoner had also been a ship camoufleur during that war, he thought he might again find work in the same capacity. In January 1942, he moved to Washington DC, accompanied by his daughter Jean, while his wife remained with her mother-in-law in Indiana. Unfortunately, as Jean recalls, “technology had made most of his camouflage skills obsolete,” and he never secured that position.

The time frame is unclear, but at some point during WWII, Gladys Thayer Reasoner joined her husband in Washington, DC, where she died of cancer on August 25,1945.

•••

Sources
Abbott Handerson Thayer and Thayer family papers, 1851-1999, bulk 1881-1950. Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution.
“Artist discovers rare self-portrait by Thayer” (1948) in The Kingston Daily Freeman (Kingston NY). December 14, pp. 1 and 17.
Behrens, Roy R. (1988) “The theories of Abbott H. Thayer: father of camouflage” Leonardo (MIT Press). Vol 21 No 3, pp. 291-296.
Behrens, Roy R. (2002) False colors: Art, design and modern camouflage. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books.
Bowdoin, W.G. (1921) “Oil Paintings by Gladys Thayer at Macbeth Gallery” in The (NY) Evening World, April 11, p. 10.
Cortissoz, Royal (1919) “Originality in art, natural and artificial: Painting by Twachtman; Miss Thayer’s portraits” in New York Tribune, January 12, p. 7.
“Gladys Reasoner to hold exhibition” (1932) in The Kingston Daily Freeman, July 25, p. 6.
Plunket, Jean Reasoner (1998) Faces that won’t sit still: An update. Washington DC: Self-published.
Putnam, G.P. (1942) Wide margins: A publisher’s autobiography. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company.
Thayer, Gerald H. (1909) Concealing coloration in the animal kingdom: An exposition of the laws of disguise through color and pattern. NY: Macmillan.
White, Nelson C. (1951) Abbott H. Thayer: Painter and naturalist. Hartford CT: Connecticut Printers.

Note A slightly different version of this text has also been provided to askART.com.