Camouflage Artist | Paul F. Brown

USS O'Brien in dazzle camouflage (1918)

In an earlier post today, we mentioned our recent discovery that (during World War I) an artist named Follette Isaacson was the chief camoufleur for the Gulf District, including various seaports in Louisiana and Texas. However, a different artist was assigned to oversee the painting of camouflage patterns on ships in the harbor at New Orleans. That person was an American illustrator named Paul F. Brown (1871-1944). Born in Concord NH, he spent most of his adult life working for Boston-area newspapers, including the Boston Record and the Boston Herald-Traveler. His wartime service is confirmed by an obituary in the New York Times (Saturday, December 9, 1944, p. 15), in which it states that "Mr. Brown during the first World War was in charge of the Navy's camouflage division at New Orleans, where he directed the camouflaging of ships." To our knowledge, Brown and his crew of painters did not apply camouflage to the USS O'Brien (pictured above), but it does show the style of the camouflage plans.

The Venus of Camouflage

WWI-era 42-cm howitzer, called Big Bertha. Creative Commons.

Anon, illustration of deceptive outfits (Syracuse Herald, 1917)

During World War I, the term "Big Bertha" (Dicke Bertha in German) referred to a massive German cannon, supposedly named "in honor" of Bertha Krupp, the heiress and owner of Krupp, the weapons manufacturer. All this coincided with the campaign for Women's Suffrage in the US, and in news stories throughout the war, it was commonly claimed that camouflage had been the invention of women.

Using cosmetics and illusionistic styles of dress, women were said to be hiding their true attributes, for the purpose of snaring rich husbands. There were dozens of news stories about this, one of which was written by Nixola Greeley-Smith (the granddaughter of Horace Greeley) and appeared in the Syracuse Herald, Tuesday, October 30, 1917, p. 10, in (get this) a section called "A Page for Women and the Home." The article's headline and sub-head read as follows: "CAMOUFLAGE MAKES THE BIG BERTHAS THIN AND ALL OUR GIRLS SOON WILL ADOPT IT: Transforming Fat Girls Into Thin Girls and Thin Girls Into Fascinatingly Plump Girls Only a Small Part of the Sartorial Deception That Will Be Practiced Here When the Latest London Fashion Tricks Reach Us—Even Girl With Ingrowing Chin Will Be Able to Hide Her Defects."
This was followed by an account of how the author, as a young woman, had come to realize the necessity of being a willing practitioner of the art of camouflage. She writes—

I shall never forget my own first initiation into the mysteries of camouflage.

An old lady took me in hand when I was fifteen and decided she must help me to be a siren. She told me the time had come for me to dress like a young woman and bought for me a complete camouflage outfit, including a large "rat" which I was supposed to wear in my hair. Never in my life have I experienced the sense of spiritual nausea that came to me then.

"I'll never wear any of those things," I said to her. "They are disgusting."

"You'll never get married unless you do," replied my matrimonial mentor. But even with this dire threat in my ears I would not submit myself to the arts of the camoufleur.…

I suppose if the art of camouflage reaches a high state of perfection, the thin woman will not have to agonize over milk and eggs and other uninteresting foods, and the fat woman can have all the cream and butter and olive oil she likes. Then if the fashions change or she becomes dissatisfied with her dimensions, she need only send for an expert camoufleur and have him paint a few lines on her clothes to become a dazzling Venus of Camouflage.

Camouflage Artist | Follette Isaacson

Bedazzled  /  RISD Camouflage Blog

About a year ago, in a post called WWI Ship Camouflage Teams, we listed ten locations around the country where there were teams of ship camouflage artists, who had the responsibility (during World War I) of applying camouflage patterns to ships. The seaports we cited were Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Charleston, Savannah, Jacksonville, Tampa, New Orleans and San Francisco. In addition, we embarked on an ongoing project of compiling the names of the artists who served in those districts.

The motivation for this came partly from having seen some of the 450 colored lithographic camouflage plans (the diagrams used by the artists in painting the ships in the harbors) that are housed in the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design. The school was given this rare set of plans in 1919 by artist Maurice L. Freedman (a student at RISD after the war), who had been the chief camoufleur of the district centered in Jacksonville FL. Above is a link to Bedazzled, the RISD dazzle camouflage blog, where some of the plans have been posted online. Also available are high quality full-color prints of the plans, at actual size.

We’ve since learned that there were eleven districts during WWI, not ten. The eleventh was called the Gulf District, and included the Louisiana seaports of Beaumont, Orange and Morgan City, and the Texas cities of Houston and Port Arthur. The chief camoufleur of that district was an artist named Follette Isaacson, whose wartime work was featured in a news article titled “Texans at Ports on Gulf Baffled Enemy Subs by Camouflage: At Port Arthur, Beaumont, Houston and Orange They Made Ships Look Like Something Else,” in the San Antonio Evening News, January 31, 1919, pp. 1-3. The article was based on an interview with Isaacson at the end of the war, when the censorship ban had been lifted.

Camouflage Artist | George W. Weisenburg

Papier mâché dead horse and wagon (c1918). Author's collection.

In an earlier post called Horse Carcass Camouflage, we published two WWI-era photographs, along with a written eyewitness account, of a sniper's observation post in the spurious form of a dead horse—it was actually made of papier mâché. Reproduced here is another image from the same period, showing what appears to be another horse carcass and a wagon, but again the carcass is papier mâché. This is one of a dozen or more news photographs that were apparently sent out by the US government to promote amusing stories about the cleverness of camoufleurs. There is no way to know for sure when and how these techniques originated, or to what extent a trick like this was actually used on the battlefield.

Related to this, we recently found a news article from 1919, which claims that a Chicago artist named George W. Weisenburg (1886-1962) made the first papier mâché horse carcass (we have our doubts). The article, titled "Oak Park Man Created Camouflage, and His Art Horse Causes Health Department Complaint," appeared in Oak Leaves (Oak Park IL), Saturday, July 29, 1919, p. 30. Here's part of the text—

 

One day last year at Camp Grant [Rockford IL] the health inspector of the camp was making his rounds when, lying out in a field, he espied what was apparently a dead horse. Into the office of the commander of the camp stormed the health inspector.

"Your men," said he, "allow dead horses to lie about the place. This is a high crime."

The commander of the camp merely smiled. "That's a camouflage horse," he explained patiently. "It is made of papier mâché and inside its stomach a man can lie concealed." The horse was an example of the work of Sergeant Weisenburg.

Which is merely by way of prelude to the statement that Sergeant George Weisenburg of 1024 Wenonah [Oak Park IL] returned home on Friday of last week after eleven months' service in France as a camouflage artist for the 311th Engineers. Sergeant Weisenburg went to Camp Grant with a trench mortar battery. A few months later he was transferred to the camouflage corps. He was a graduate of the Chicago Art Institute and his ability as an artist was soon discovered. He was given charge of a company of artists who designed screens to camouflage the approach of troops or ammunition transports. The idea of the camouflage horse was his own creation and attracted wide attention.

At the Art Guild in Rockford [IL] he was requested to exhibit a number of canvases that had been hung at the American Art Exhibit. He was promoted to first class sergeant.

After eleven months at Camp Grant he was attached to the 311th Engineers and went overseas with the outfit. After eight months of service in France he was allowed to take a three months' course at the art center at Bellevue, being listed as a special casual. The school was designed by the American Government for those members of the AEF wishing to avail themselves of an advanced course in art. Sergeant Weisenburg returned to America last week, receiving his discharge at Camp Mills [Long Island NY]. He is a son of Dr. and Mrs. Berthold Weisenburg of 1024 Wenonah Avenue [Oak Park].

Beyond that, there isn't much online about Weisenburg, although there is one mention of his having been an art teacher (in later life) at Marshall High School in Oak Park.

Camouflage Artist | Stanley Martineau

Stanley Martineau (detail) in his studio, n.d.

Recently we ran across an Associated Press Wirephoto, dated January 19, 1943, which includes the following caption: NEW YORK, Jan. 18, SOLDIER'S BUST OF FDR UNVEILED. Pvt. Stanley Martineau (left) of the 603rd Engineers, Camouflage Division, is congratulated today on his sculpture of President Roosevelt. The three-ton, 13-foot bust was unveiled at the General Post Office here. Left to right: Pvt. Martineau, Mayor F.H. LaGuardia of New York City, Postmaster Albert Goldman and Basil O'Connor, President of the National Foundation of Infantile Paralysis.

Stanley Martineau (pictured above working on a portrait of financier J.P. Morgan), from Washington Depot CT, was born in 1915 and died in 1977. Throughout his life, he worked as a commissioned sculptor, completing portrait busts and/or medallions of US Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman, the inventor Alexander Graham Bell, financier W.K. Vanderbilt, and various sports heroes, including tennis player Pierre Etchebaster and basketball player Bob Cousy.

Less widely known is his service during World War II as a member of the top secret Ghost Army, a part of the 603rd Engineers, Camouflage Division, officially referred to as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops. Other well-known artists-designers in the same unit included Bill Blass, Ellsworth Kelly, Arthur Singer (wildlife illustrator) and Art Kane. The existence and operations of this 1100-person unit remained classified until 1996. Details of its mission (including interviews with some of its participants) will be featured later this year (2012), with the release of a new documentary film called The Ghost Army.

Camouflage Artist | Ezra Jack Keats

Ezra Jack Keats (from Keat's Neighborhood)

Like Robert Lawson (who illustrated The Story of Ferdinand in 1936), his acclaimed predecessor in writing and illustrating children's books, award-winning artist and author Ezra Jack Keats (1916-1983) was also a camouflage artist. Lawson had served in France in the US Army's American Camouflage Corps in World War I, while the younger Keats (known then by his birth name, Jacob Ezra Katz) designed camouflage patterns during World War II in Tallahassee FL for the US Army Air Corps. Before the war, he had worked as a mural painter for the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and as a background artist for the Captain Marvel comic strip. At war's end, searching for employment after receiving an honorable discharge, he was so dismayed by the prevalence of anti-Semitism that he changed his legal name to Ezra Jack Keats. He began illustrating children's books in 1954. According to his obituary in the New York Times, in the last three decades of his life, he illustrated 33 books, 22 of which he also wrote.

Camouflage and Baseball

American baseball in France, 1917

Recently we ran across this 1917 press photograph of a baseball game in wartime France. In the background, among the onlookers, are two military officers, and it occurs to us that these are probably American ballplayers, either US Army infantry, or professional ballplayers, brought in by the French army to teach its soldiers how to play.

In support of that, at the end of World War I, a section called "Baseball in France" was published in John B. Foster, ed., Spaulding's Official Baseball Guide (NY: American Sports Publications, 1919), which claims that French military officers were greatly impressed by the "perfect athletic training" of American soldiers, and concluded "that much of the excellence in running, in throwing, in quick action, in rapid achievement and alert judgment, came from years of training in baseball." The French brass "decided to adopt baseball instruction among their recruits," with the result that Johnny Evers (a star second baseman for the Boston Braves until 1917, and then with the Philadelphia Phillies) was brought over to Paris to teach the game to French recruits. After only ten days of instruction, the benefits were already evident and the generals were persuaded that "skill in throwing hand grenades would be much increased by regular training in baseball."

Coincident with this was the baseball contribution made by the artists who were attached to the American Camouflage Corps. It was their wartime duty, according to this source, "to disguise everything pertaining to rolling stock, airplanes, automobiles, and even themselves, under the cover of mystic cubic designs of all colors," and when they turned to baseball, they showed up "in baseball suits camouflaged like the uniforms of camouflaged troops. The result has been disastrous for both catchers and batsmen, to say nothing of fielders and basemen; and the matches between these men have created an immense amount of amusement and curiosity."

Gestalt Theory, Cubism and Camouflage

On Max Wertheimer and Pablo Picasso: Gestalt Theory, Cubism and Camouflage

Art / Science Camouflage Podcast

Hooded Cutttlefish (photo by Silke Baron). Creative Commons.

EARLIER THIS WEEK, Woods Hole marine biologist Roger Hanlon and video artist Basia Goszcynska were interviewed by Mindy Todd on a 30-minute live radio program called The Point. Hanlon, who was featured on NOVA several years ago in Kings of Camouflage (available now as dvd), is well known for his research of camouflage in cuttlefish. The subject of this podcast is the collaborative work of artists and scientists in studies of camouflage and communication, with allusions to further ideas about architecture, landscape design, advertising and other research possibilities.

Camouflage Research Bibliography

Camouflage Research Bibliography

Camouflage from Silhouettes

© Roy R. Behrens 2012

From Everett L. Warner, "Marine Camouflage" in The Bush Magazine of Factory and Shipping Economy. January 15, 1918, pp. 12-14. Reprinted in Roy R. Behrens, ed., SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook (2012), with diagrams redrawn—

IF YOU WILL cut out of black paper the silhouette of a steamer as in Figure 1, you will see that on a dark boat painted in one solid color the contour is perfectly visible. Cut exactly the same silhouette out of a column of fine print and you have something equivalent to low visibility camouflage (see Figure 2). It is less visible than the first, but the outline of the steamer can still be discerned. Figure 3, where the pattern of a steamer has been cut out of larger type, illustrates the dazzle system in camouflage, and you will note that the contour of the vessel is now exceedingly difficult to determine.

Camouflage on YouTube

Roy R. Behrens on camouflage

Mass Production Camouflage

WWI artillery vehicle, with factory camouflage applied

From Frank Parker Stockbridge, Yankee Ingenuity in the War. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1920—

[During World War I] Yankee ingenuity found application in the devising of methods of putting on the camouflage with the utmost speed and efficiency. In the gun carriage plant of the American Car and Foundry Company, for instance, I watched the girls in khaki overalls spraying camouflage on the finished caissons and wheels one afternoon. The paints of different colors, in huge tanks, were deposited by means of a gigantic reproduction of the air brush, used by artists everywhere.
The main office of the American Car and Foundry Company was located at 165 Broadway in New York. Beginning in June 1917, the company's Detroit production facility was contracted by the US Government to produce 10,970 artillery vehicles at a rate of one hundred per day. A peculiar innovation of these is that a brightly-colored disruptive camouflage pattern (see photo above) was airbrushed onto these vehicles as part of their manufacture. It's also interesting that the exact same camouflage pattern was applied to each of them.

The three photos below (along with a number of others) were published in 1919 in a book titled The American Car and Foundry Company in Khaki: Its Production Achievements in the Great War, which was produced and distributed by the company. Shown below are views of the camouflage being applied by women workers in the factory's paint shop (as described above by Stockbridge), the outdoor storage of thousands of these (awaiting shipping instructions), and a crated vehicle ready to ship.

Cagoules | WWI Camouflaged Robes

From Roy R. Behrens, CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage (Bobolink Books, 2009), p. 79—

Cagoules were paint-splattered hooded cloaks devised by the first French camoufleurs, to prevent themselves from being seen by aerial observers as they manned long-range artillery. A wonderful painting of this [shown above] was published on the cover of Scientific American on September 29, 1917. Some of these cloaks still exist, including prototypes designed by French camoufleur Eugene Corbin, and reproduced in Blechman• (2004:126-127) and Newark•• (2007:83). They are also described in Kahn••• (1984:148), who states the following: "Hidden beneath camouflaged cagoules, hooded uniforms…was a ghoulish image of the modern soldier, whose finely fitted and brilliant red and blue clothing was replaced by an amorphous costume of drab greens and browns that turned the individual into a frightening form."

A photograph of a group of hooded artillerymen was also published in the Popular Science Monthly, Vol 93 No 3, September 1918, p. 335, as shown below. The headline reads "Not Monks, But Camouflaged Artillerymen."

Amazingly, full-color French photographs of comparable outfits have also survived (see adjusted example below), and can be found online by searching "camouflage" at the Bibliotheque nationale de France.

•Hardy Blechman, ed. (2004), DPM: An Encyclopedia of Camouflage. London: DPM. ••Tim Newark (2007), Camouflage. London: Thames and Hudson. •••Elizabeth Louise Kahn (1984), The Neglected Majority: "Les Camoufleurs," Art History, and World War I. Lanham MD: University Press of America.

Arthur Lismer | WWI Ship Camouflage

Arthur Lismer (1885-1969), a British-born Canadian painter and a member of the Group of Seven, was not a camouflage artist. Beginning in 1918, he served instead as an Official War Artist and was assigned to document naval activities at the Halifax Harbor for the Canadian War Records. Among the subjects he portrayed were dazzle-painted ships, the best known example of which is the painting reproduced above, The Olympic with Returned Soldiers (1919). The original artwork is in the collection of the Canadian War Museum.

Camouflaged Cannon Duplicate

purchase online

Here's an oddity: In an earlier post, we reproduced a painting (the top image above) by an artist named S. Ugo, of British soldiers applying a dazzling camouflage scheme to field artillery. It was reproduced initially in The Sphere (August 3, 1918:86-87). But more recently, we ran across a second reproduction (the bottom image above) of what at first appears to be the very same painting. This one appeared in color in Samuel John Duncan-Clark, History's Greatest War: A Pictorial Narrative. Geographical Publishing Company, 1919, pp. 50-51. As becomes clear when the two are viewed together, there are some curious differences. The bottom one is a flopped version in which the artillery faces left. In addition, four airplanes and a dirigible have been added to the sky. Notice that it's also cropped—and the artist's signature has disappeared.

WWI Dazzle Camouflage Poster

Above World War I poster by American illustrator Adolph Treidler (1886-1981), printed and distributed by the Publications Section of the US Shipping Board, Philadelphia, in 1917. A student of Robert Henri, Treidler designed a number of recruiting and Liberty Loan posters, and more than two hundred magazine covers. Courtesy Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs. For more on dazzle camouflage, see SHIP SHAPE (2012).

•  •  •

From National Geographic Magazine. Vol 34 (1919), p. 174—

The work of camouflaging has been perfected to such nicety that a ship can be decorated with its particular pattern of streaks and stripes with astonishing dispatch. It is a matter of record that at one American port an 8,800-ton freighter was completely camouflaged in 24 hours. The district camoufleur was notified late Saturday afternoon that the vessel in question would be ready to sail Monday evening. By midnight Saturday the design for the ship had been selected and the pattern indicated [with chalk lines] on the hull and superstructure. With the arrival of necessary supplies at that hour, 62 painters were set to work and by 5:30 Sunday afternoon the ship was ready to defy the most keen-sighted commander of a Prussian U-boat.

additional sources

Ship Shape | Dazzle Camouflage in WWI

Wasp-like dazzle camouflage by Alon Bement in SHIP SHAPE

From Peter Krass, Portrait of War: The US Army's First Combat Artists and the Doughboy's Experience in WWI. New York: Wiley and Sons, 2007, p. 18—

On day nine out to sea, [Ernest] Peixotto and [Wallace] Morgan's convoy was met by a dozen destroyers that were to escort them into port. The coloring of these warships caught Peixotto's eye; they were "brilliantly camouflaged like wasps, queerly striped with black and white, with spots between of yellow, gray-blue, and water-green"—the softened tone of Monet's paintings. "Like wasps too they darted around us," he wrote, "zigzagging across our bows, dropping astern, watchful, then, with a burst of speed, forging up ahead again."

Cubist Rooster Camouflage

Reproduced above is a seemingly senseless arrangement of lines, one of many that appeared on the entertainment pages of American newspapers in 1913, in the wake of the public reaction to cubist and futurist visual art. It was the year of the Armory Show, the premier exhibition of Modern Art in the US. Four years later, when dazzle ship camouflage was adopted in 1917, the public immediately claimed that it looked like cubism, harlequin leotards, crazy quilts, and embedded figures (or "picture puzzles") like this one. When the above drawing appeared in an issue of the San Francisco Sunday Call (1913), the reader was challenged to fill in shapes within the box in such a way that a "cubo-rooster" would result. Below is the answer which appeared in the paper the following week.

Australian Decoy Cow

Papier mache decoy cow (1944)

For more about this decoy papier mache milk cow, devised by World War II Australian camouflage artists, click here…

San Quentin Prison Camouflage

Inmates in striped prison suits (not at San Quentin)

From Dean Jennings, "Inside San Quentin Prison: Factory for Forgotten Men" in The Rotarian (August 1948), p. 16—

"When [US] Army officers were searching for camouflage artists [during World War II], they came to San Quentin [State Prison in California] on a routine visit. Strolling around the prison hospital, the administration headquarters, and other buildings on the huge reservation, they noticed hundreds of beautiful murals on the walls. There were paintings of all the great railroad trains in history; there were life-size works illustrating Bible stories. There were ships, planes, landscapes, buildings—covering every available inch of bare wall space.

'That's wonderful stuff!' one of the officers exclaimed. 'How big is your staff of artists?'

[Warden Clifton] Duffy grinned. 'I haven't any staff. Every one of those murals was done by one man. He wanted to give this place some beauty, even though he knew he could never take his work off the walls.'

The officer nodded thoughtfully. 'We need men with that kind of guts,' he said. 'We'll take him.'

So Roy Colyar, a great artist behind walls, went over to an Army post on special parole, using his brush for camouflage work—so that other men might live. Colyar is still in the service, and his fine record has earned him a full parole effective this year."

Hugh B. Cott | Zoologist and Camoufleur

from Hugh B. Cott, Adaptive Coloration in Animals (1940)

Reproduced above is one of my favorite drawings from what is one of my favorite books. It is a cluster of drawings of the "hind limbs of the Common Frog (Rana temporaria), showing coincident disruptive pattern[s]." They are one of about 150 illustrations of natural camouflage in Hugh B. Cott's well-known classic book about that fascinating subject, titled Adaptive Coloration in Animals (London: Methuen, 1940). What makes these drawings (and the book itself) even more interesting is that Cott (1900-1987) was not just a zoologist—he was a highly skilled scientific illustrator (these are his own pen-and-ink drawings), a wildlife photographer, and a prominent British camoufleur in World War II.

In these drawings, he is trying to show how disruptive patterns in animal forms combine with continuous patterns to produce an effect that Cott referred to as coincident disruption. As he so aptly explained it, disruptive patterns work "by the optical destruction of what is present," while continuous patterns work "by the optical construction of what is not present." He then concludes that "while disruptive patterns appear to break up what is really a continuous surface, coincident patterns seem to unite what are actually discontinuous surfaces" (p. 70).

This same illustration was also recently reproduced in the new book by art historian Ann Elias, Camouflage Australia (Sydney University Press, 2011). Having followed her research in recent years, I was delighted to be asked to write a preface for the book, which is an admirable achievement in interdisciplinary research. In the preface, I could not resist the temptation to compare Elias' own efforts to Cott's drawing of the frogs' hind limbs. The author, I said, "has folded up a lengthy limb of scholarly tradition (made up of sacrosanct disciplines like aesthetics, zoology, anthropology and sociology), in order to reveal new zones that are cross-disciplinary" (p. viii).

Camouflage as Hide and Seek

WWI disguises: one thing looks like something else

From Reginald John Farrer, The Void of War. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918, pp. 67-68—

"In certain aspects the war [World War I] is nothing but a glorious, gigantic game of hide and seek—camouflage is nothing else. It is not only the art of making things invisible, but also of making them look like something else. Even the art of inconspicuousness is subtle and exciting. What glory it must be to splash your tents and lorries all over with wide waggles of orange and emerald and ochre and umber, in a drunken chaos, until you have produced a perfect futurist masterpiece which one would thin would pierce the very vaults of heaven with its yells. However, as pandemonium produces numbness in the ear, so I suppose a Lost-Dogs'-Home-at-Battersea in chromatics does deaden visibility in a dun-colored ensemble.

But disguise is an even higher branch of the art: you go on to make everything else look like something else. Hermit crabs and caddis worms become our masters. Down from the sky peers the microscopic midget of a Boche plane: he sees a tree—but it may be gun: he sees a gun—but it may be only a tree. And so the game of hide and seek goes on, in a steady acceleration of ingenuity on both sides, till at last the only logical outcome will be to have no camouflage at all. You will simply put out your guns fair and square in the open, because nobody will ever believe, by that time, that anything really is what it looks like.

As far as guns go, the war is developing into a colossal fancy dress ball, with immunity for the prize: wolves in sheeps' clothing are nothing to these shepherdesses of the countryside. The more important they are, the more meekly do they shrink from under dominoes of boughs or sods, or strawberry netting tagged over with fluffets of green and brown rags. And sometimes they lurk under some undiscoverable knoll in a coppice, and do their barking through a little hole from which you would only expect rabbits, not shells. It must be the most endless joy to go on planning these disguises. One would lie awake at night wondering to make ones gun look like a dog kennel, or a dog kennel conceal a gun. But, of course, the individual camouflage is even more exciting yet."

Building Camouflage

News photo of a British hospital in disruptive camouflage (c1918)

From American Architect and Architecture Vol 17 (1920), p. 704—

"Now that the war is over the camouflage artist may be seeking occupation, and the Architects' Journal of London has facetiously throught of a manner in which his talents might be used for the general good. We are surrounded by many buildings which cause us daily pain, but which serve some utilitarian purpose. Why should not the camouflage artist so decorate the fronts of these buildings as to make them absolutely invisible from the street? It might excite wonder to see some hundreds of people passing into a building which apparently consisted of one floor only, but this would not matter. We should only consider that there were more marvels than had been dreamed of in our philosophy, while local authorities would have to determine what new buildings should be allowed to be visible."

WWI Camouflaged Pissoir

World War I (August 1917), a camouflaged pissoir

Color photography was invented prior to 1914, but it wasn't widely used during World War I. I don't think I've ever seen a color photograph of a dazzle-camouflaged ship from that era.  There are of course paintings of a some of those ships, hand-painted wooden models, and tinted black and white photographs. There's even colorized film footage. Recently I ran across a website (there are other sites as well) that features color photographs from the war. The one shown here for example shows a French soldier at a camouflaged field pissoir.

Camouflaged Pigeon Roosts

WWI camouflaged pigeon roost

During World War I, one of the fastest, most effective ways to send a message was the use of homing pigeons, who reportedly succeeded at a rate of 95%. More than 100,000 pigeons were used on the battlefield in France. They were housed in camouflaged transport vehicles like the one shown here, vans that had been adapted to serve as pigeon roosts.  Of course, this led to spurious claims that, if the camouflage was too effective, it would prevent the birds from finding the roost.

For example, the following comment appeared in Eva March Tappen, The Little Book of the War (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1918), p. 76—

"Landscape painters were called upon to help in the camouflage, and airmen sailed aloft to see how well they had succeeded. One succeeded altogether too well, if we may trust the story, for he camouflaged so perfectly the van in which homing pigeons had been brought that on their return they did not recognize it."

Below is another camouflaged pigeon roost from the same era. It's a non-motorized wagon, and its camouflage is different from the previous example. In this case, the wagon has been painted to match the stone wall, fence and shrubbery in the background.

Non-motorized camouflaged pigeon roost

Camouflage and Masquerade

Regrettably we don't know the source of this photo. I found it several years ago, and have since misplaced the notes. I remember that it was taken in France (c1918), and that the group of people shown are army camoufleurs, either American or French, or (more likely) a mixture of camouflage artists from both. The odd thing of course is how they are dressed. These are "camouflaged camoufleurs," dressed up for a costume party, a masquerade.The face of one person (standing center, middle row) is painted like an American flag, while another (seated, to the left) looks like the Red Cross. The seconded seated person from the right is wearing an unusually disruptive design (not unlike dazzle ship camouflage). Inevitably, there are themes related to race—on the far right is a seated man in blackface (as was typical of minstrel shows), and in the center on the ground is someone in Native American garb.

During WWI among GIs in France (not just the camoufleurs), it was common to organize masquerades and other costumed events and performances for the white Army "doughboys" (the US Army was not yet integrated, so Black soldiers were in separate units). Recently, I found a book on Entertaining the American Army: The American Army by James W. Evans and Garder L. Harding (Association Press, 1921), in which the costumes are described as follows:

"Many of these garments were contributed by actors and actresses back in the States. Winthrop Ames [a Broadway producer who organized an Over There Theatre League] sent over twenty-six trunks of costumes in June 1918. Here were Indian outfits, period robes, Uncle Sam suits, cowboy rigs, hoopskirts—everything a khaki actor might require.

Appeals for supplies were varied. Negro wigs were unknown in France until the doughboy came, and thousands had to be brought over, enough to camouflage an army corps. Letters like this would come in: 'The Machine Gun Company wants six ukuleles, three bass viols, twenty wigs, lots of grease paint, and six pairs of bones, and the Colonel says the "Y" [YMCA] will send them. We've got the greatest [N-word] show on earth!'" (pp. 171-172).

According to The Chronological History of the Negro in America, by the end of WWI, 367,000 Blacks had been drafted, thus representing 11% of the ground forces who fought for American freedoms in France. Back home in 1918, 58 Blacks were lynched that year, up from 38 before.

Camouflage Artist | Kimon Nicolaides

Nicolaides, The Natural Way to Draw

American artist and teacher Kimon Nicolaides (1891-1938) is best-known as the author of a famous drawing textbook, The Natural Way to Draw (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1941). But he was also an American Army camoufleur during World War I.

From "Heard and Seen" in the Washington Times, February 17, 1919 (editorial page): "Sergt. Kimon Nicolaides, camoufleur, is here again. He is studying art."

Born in Washington DC, Nicolaides' father was a Greek-born importer of Oriental artifacts, while his mother's ancestors can be traced to the US Colonial period. As a young man, he earned money by framing pictures, writing newspaper articles, and playing the role of an art student as an extra in a film. He studied drawing at the Art Students League with George Bridgman and John Sloan.

When the US entered WWI, Nicolaides volunteered for the American Camouflage Corps. He served in France for over a year, for which he received a citation. One of his wartime duties required the study of geographical contour maps, an experience that may have influenced his use of 'contour drawing' as Exercise One later in his drawing book. He died before the book came out. Its completion and publication were overseen by a devoted former student, Mamie Harmon, whose papers are in the Archives of American Art.

French Truck Camouflage

Colored lithograph from La Guerre Documentée

To my mind, this is one of the most exquisite illustrations of camouflage, as practiced during World War I. It's one of a series of colored lithographs that appeared initially in La Guerre Documentée (c1920).

It represents three stages in the application of disruptive camouflage. In the top, there is no disruption since the truck is painted in monochrome gray (in a manner not unlike the use of battleship gray in ship camouflage). In the second stage, disruptive shapes have been applied that contradict its physical shape. And then, in the bottom image, the truck has been placed in a setting in which it is not only visually broken apart (high difference) but aspects of its pattern blend (high similarity) with various parts of the background.

The gestalt psychologists' term for this was an embedded figure. In his famous book, Adaptive Coloration in Animals (1940), British zoologist (and military camouflage instructor) Hugh B. Cott talked about the combined use of blending and disruption in the coloration of animals, as when a frog folds up its legs, and connecting patterns link its limbs. Much earlier, American artist Abbott H. Thayer had described the same phenomenon (in Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom (1909)), but it was Cott who came up with a suitable name—he called it coincident disruption.

Camouflage Artist | Robert Webb Jr.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camouflage & the National Parks

From Linda Flint McClelland, Building the National Parks: Historic Landscape Design and Construction. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998, pp. 459-460—
 

With the advent of aviation defense, camouflage emerged as a new field of design in World War II—one that was well suited to the skills and knowledge of landscape architects, many of whom had worked in the woods andhad spent almost a decade designing constructed improvements that blended into the natural scenery of state and national parks… Like the design of natural parks, the success of camouflage relied heavily upon site selection, adherence to principles of design which concealed form and detail, and the selection of appropriate materials often including natural vegetation. Camouflage required that development conform to the general character of the site and fit into the immediate surroundings, thereby following the natural contours of the land and avoiding raw scars of cuts and fills…

Camouflage research and development drew upon the skills and experience of several former park designers. At the offices of the Engineering Board of the Corps of Engineers at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, George L. Nason became the chief of the camouflage design office. His varied staff of designers—architects, landscape architects, illustrators, engineers, model makers, and site designers—included V[ivian] Roswell Ludgate, who had been the regional landscape architect for the National Park Service's Eastern Region, and Merel S. Sager, who had been a resident landscape architect for the Western Region since the late 1920s. Former Massachusetts state park inspector Edward B. Ballard served as an Air Corps for camouflage research at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, and regional landscape architect Norman T. Newton served as an intelligence and camouflage officer for the Air Corps at Pendleton Field, Oregon.