Camouflage Artist | Barry Faulkner

New Hampshire muralist and camoufleur Barry Faulkner

In a number of earlier posts, we've talked about New Hampshire muralist Barry Faulkner (1881-1966) and the extent of his involvement (along with sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry (1879-1966)) in organizing artists to serve in the American Camouflage Corps during World War I. Faulkner later talked about his wartime experiences in his autobiography, Sketches From An Artist's Life (Dublin NH,: William Bauhan, 1973), in which was also reproduced the above photograph.

Earlier this year, a substantial article by historian E. Malcolm Parkinson (associate professor emeritus of history at Worchester Polytechnic Institute) was featured in Prologue, a publication of the US National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), Vol 44 No 1 (Spring 2012). In the article, titled "The Artist at War: Painters, Muralist, Sculptors, Architects Worked to Provide Camouflage for Troops in World War I," Parkinson notes that while Faulkner is remembered for his commissioned murals—including two large paintings in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building (as shown below)—few people are aware of his role in the army. The entire article can now be accessed online. more>>

Faulkner's murals in the Rotunda of the National Archives Building

Camouflage Artist | Ezra Winter

The Ezra Winter Project (online)

American artist Ezra Winter (1886-1949) was born near Traverse City MI. He attended Olivet College (in Michigan), then studied in Chicago at the School of the Art Institute, where he graduated in 1911. In the same year, he won the prestigious Prix de Rome, by which he was able to study for three years at the American Academy in Rome. Winter's prize was in the category of painting, for what was described in a news story at the time as "a large canvas called The Arts, a beautiful and graceful work." A young Denver architect, George Simpson Keyl , received the same prize in that category, while the Prix de Rome in sculpture that year was awarded to Harry Dickinson Thrasher.

Thrasher had grown up in Plainfield NH, where he had been a student of the most famous American sculptor at the turn of the century, Augustus Saint-Gaudens. As Thrasher was growing up, among his friends were Saint-Gaudens' son, named Homer (a theatre designer and, later, an arts administrator), and a young painter from Dublin NH named Barry Faulkner (he was a cousin and student of Abbott Handerson Thayer, the so-called "father of camouflage," and had studied with Augustus Saint-Gaudens as well). Later, Faulkner became a prominent muralist, and a friend of Ezra Winter, with whom he collaborated on several major projects.

When the US entered World War I, a unit for camouflage artists was formed by the US Army. One of the officers in charge of that unit was Homer Saint-Gaudens, while among the very first artists to join were Barry Faulkner and Harry Dickinson Thrasher. After a period of training on the grounds of the American University near Washington DC, their unit was deployed to France at the end of 1917. Of the camoufleurs, there were only two who didn't return—Everett A. Herter (the brother of US diplomat Christian Herter) and Harry Thrasher, both of whom were killed in France in 1918. Faulkner delivered the eulogy at Thrasher's funeral.

At the same time, Ezra Winter was in New York, where, as a civilian, he worked for the US Shipping Board, as a member of one of thirteen teams of camouflage artists (stationed at various ports around the country) who supervised the painting of dazzle camouflage schemes on thousands of commercial ships (called merchant ships). In charge of the unit that Winter was in was another prominent muralist, William Andrew Mackay. According to official policy, the artists assigned to ship painting were not responsible for the design of the camouflage plans, only for applying them.

Instead, the initial camouflage plans were designed by another team of artists at the Navy's Camouflage Section in Washington DC (there was another research group, largely made up of scientists, at the Eastman Kodak Laboratories in Rochester NY). The DC team of artists made wooden scale models of merchant ships, applied experimental patterns to them, and tested their effectiveness in an observation theatre. The patterns that worked the best were then drawn up, printed in multiples as color lithographs, and sent out to the various harbors, where they served as a "blueprint" while painting the ships.

One of the artists in the Navy's DC camouflage team (the group that actually designed the camouflage patterns) was a British-born American sculptor named John Gregory. There are photographs of him, seated in a room with other camouflage artists (Everett L. Warner, Frederick Waugh, Gordon Stevenson, and others), painting camouflage patterns on miniature ships.

Ezra Winter is not in these photos of course, because he was attached to Mackay's unit in New York. But he is in other photographs (taken shortly after the war) when, as he worked on commissions (one of which was the interior of the Cunard Building in New York), he was photographed with two of his collaborators—his fellow wartime camoufleurs Barry Faulkner and John Gregory.

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For more on Ezra Winter, see The Ezra Winter Project by Jessica Helfand, who is co-founder of a Connecticut-based design studio called Winterhouse—located in Ezra Winter's former home and studio in Falls Village CT. As of this posting, three Winter-related installments have been issued, the most recent two at here and here.

Camoufleurs Gerome Brush and Barry Faulkner

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

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

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

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

More about Brush and Faulkner

Camouflage Artist | Homer Saint-Gaudens

Above A portrait by Carlota Saint-Gaudens of her husband Lieutenant Homer Shiff Saint-Gaudens in his US Army uniform in 1917 when he was in charge of the camouflage corps. As published in International Studio (December 1919).

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In the opening pages of Hannah Rose Shell's book about camouflage and surveillance, Hide and Seek: Camouflage, Photography, and the Media of Reconnaissance (Zone Books, 2012), she describes the resourcefulness of Homer Saint-Gaudens (1880-1958), who invented a way to make blanket-like camouflage coverings by shredding books and papers.

Recently I also found an online paper by Susan Platt, titled "Gambling, Fencing and Camouflage: Homer Saint-Gaudens and the Carnegie International 1922-1950." It was initially published in International Encounters (Carnegie Museum of Art) in 1996. Saint-Gaudens was the only child of Augustus Saint-Gaudens (the most famous sculptor of his time) and Augusta Homer Saint-Gaudens, also an artist, who was a distant cousin of Winslow Homer.

As Platt explains, the young Saint-Gaudens enjoyed gambling and fencing, and during World War I, he was the officer in charge of the American Camouflage Corps. Her thesis is not so much about Saint-Gaudens' camouflage service as about his presumed reliance on gambling, fencing and camouflaging skills in the decades while he was director of an annual competition called the Carnegie International Exhibition. In that capacity, she writes, he "would 'play the odds,' parry and thrust with the many different constituencies that he needed to satisfy, and disguise radical styles in the midst of bland examples in order to avoid attacks."

Homer Saint-Gaudens had earned his degree at Harvard, where his freshman roommate was future muralist Barry Faulkner (who soon dropped out to study art). Faulkner was a cousin of painter and naturalist Abbott H. Thayer, who was sometimes referred to in news articles as "the father of camouflage" because of his startling assertions about "concealing coloration" in animals. Faulkner had also studied with Saint-Gaudens' famous father, as had his friend, a sculptor named Sherry Edmundson Fry. Later, when Faulkner and Fry were living in New York, they formed a civilian camouflage group, called the New York Camouflage Society, for the purpose of preparing artists to serve as army camoufleurs. When the US actually entered the war, the two men were among the first to join a unit called the American Camouflage Corps. To their surprise, the person in charge of that unit was Homer Saint-Gaudens, who was fresh out of officer training.

It appears that other officers admired Saint-Gaudens, while the enlisted men despised him. According to Grenville Rickard, an architect and camoufleur who had graduated from Yale, and who served in France in WWI, "The 'Saint' [was] our generally accepted term for Lieutenant Saint-Gaudens…" but Faulkner (not an officer but an enlisted soldier in the same unit) recalls that Homer Saint-Gaudens was "intensely disliked by the men."

As Platt explains in detail, before and after WWI, Saint-Gaudens was employed in the theatre, as the stage manager for the widely-admired actress Maude Adams. In 1921, he was appointed Assistant Director of the Department of Fine arts at the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburgh, and then became the Director a year later.

It is of further interest that, in 1924, there was a new addition to the painting faculty at the Carnegie Institute. It was Everett Longley Warner, an artist who had been the head of a team of US Navy ship camoufleurs during WWI.

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Below Roy R. Behrens, Angels Can Fly. Digital montage, print on paper (2011). Based partly on a photograph of a bronze sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens (1891) for the Adams Memorial in Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington DC. The setting for the sculpture was designed by Stanford White. For detailed information, see Joyce K. Schiller, The Artistic Collaboration of Augustus Saint-Gaudens and Stanford White. PhD dissertation. (St Louis MO: Washington University, 1997).

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).

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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.

Camouflage Artist | Frank H. Schwarz

Oregon Statehouse Rotunda (1938) Frank H. Schwarz

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

William Twigg-Smith | Camouflage Artist

William Twigg-Smith, Hilo Sampans (1917), oil on canvas

On Wikipedia, there is a brief biography (which admittedly I contributed to) of a New Zealand-born American artist named William Twigg-Smith (1883-1950), a painter, illustrator and musician (primarily a flutist), who lived most of his adult life in Hawaii. During World War I, in 1917 he paid his own expenses to travel from Honolulu to Washington DC to join the American Camouflage Corps on the grounds of Camp American University. According to a news article (Riley H. Allen, "Camoufleur Twigg Smith Is Wearing Corporal's Stripes" in Honolulu Star-Bulletin, October 20, 1917, p. 8), he "was about the first man on the ground, and he carries No. 1 card showing him to be the first member of Company F, 25th United States Engineers, Camouflage, the official name of the unit." Soon after, he was joined in that unit by Iowa sculptor Sherry Edmundson Fry, Everit Herter (brother of statesman Christian Herter), and New Hampshire muralist Barry Faulkner (cousin of Abbott H. Thayer, frequently referred to as the "father of camouflage"). In Faulkner's autobiography (Sketches From an Artist's Life), he recalls that when he, along with Fry and Herter, first arrived at their tent, "we found a minstrel [Twigg-Smith] easing his solitude by playing Hawaiian airs on a ukelele. He came from the islands and was pleasant and companionable."

I recently found a photograph of Twigg-Smith (reproduced below) that appeared initially in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin (Saturday, February 17, 1917) in connection with his collaboration with two other artists on three Pan-Pacific Carnival dioramas that year. Five months later, he would leave to join the army. To enable Twigg-Smith to travel to Washington DC, a large exhibit of his work was mounted in the Pan-Pacific building, with proceeds from the sales to go to covering his enlistment costs.

left to right: Joseph Whittle, Lionel Walden, D. Howard Hitchcock, and William Twigg-Smith

Twigg-Smith was born in Nelson, New Zealand. At age 16, he moved to the US, living first in San Francisco, where he studied painting with Evelyn Almond Withrow, and then in Chicago, where he worked with Harry M. Walcott at the Art Institute. A naturalized US citizen, in 1916 he settled in Hawaii, where he was a flutist for the Honolulu Symphony, and where, by his marriage to Margaret Carter Thurston, he became related to the American entrepreneurs (descended from the original missionaries) who had engineered the overthrow of the Hawaiian royalty. He was the father of Thurston Twigg-Smith.

Prior to his camouflage service, Twigg-Smith was known for on-site paintings of active Hawaiian volcanoes. In a news article (Honolulu Star-Bulletin, December 9, 1916, p. 8), he is said to have exhibited "a sequence of volcano paintings—an attempt to catch Madame Pele in a systematic series of her changeful moods." A later article (December 26, p. 4) reports that the "crater Mauna Loa is smoking…[and Twigg-] Smith is anxious to get to the Big Island and paint the crater in action."

In February 1919, having returned from France but still in Washington, Twigg-Smith was among a dozen artists who were listed as having contributed "posters and decorations" for a philanthropic fundraising event. In a news account of that (Washington Times, February 9, 1919, p. 11) it was stated that "Men of the camouflage corps are seen on the streets of Washington wearing funny looking yellow lizards on the left shoulder. The lizard is really a chameleon, a 'critter' which changes color according to the background on which it is placed. The insignia therefore is significant of their work." Below is a photograph of Twigg-Smith's fellow camoufleur, Barry Faulkner, in a uniform bearing his yellow camoufleur's shoulder patch.

American muralist Barry Faulkner (c1918), wearing camoufleur's patch

In that same article, the names of those in the Camouflage Corps (no doubt some of them misspelled) are listed as follows: "Leslie Thrasher, H. K[err] Eby, A. Bloudheim, H[enry] R. Sutter, A. Rottnere [probably Abraham Rattner], G[eorge] B[radford] Ashworth, Fred[eric] S[eymour] [called Feg] Murray, Robert Laswent, Joseph Cox, [Frederic] Earl Christie [Christy], Frank [Francis William] Swain, Don Methvin, Walter Tubesing, Howard [Ashman] Patterson and [William]Twigg Smith."

Camouflage Artist | Everit Herter

Herter Brothers cabinet (c1875)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Everit Herter (1913), Fogg Museum, Harvard

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

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

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

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

additional sources

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

Countershading | Thayer's Disappearing Ducks

from MAS Context (Summer 2014)

We have featured earlier posts about American artist and naturalist Abbott H. Thayer’s use of wooden duck decoys to demonstrate countershading. Additional information continues to surface almost daily. Some of this is detailed in an essay in the Summer 2014 issue of a Chicago-based design and architecture magazine called MAS Context. Here’s the link to the free online version, with the title page above. Other discoveries are below.

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Barry Faulkner, Barry Faulkner: Sketches from an Artist’s Life. Dublin NH: William L. Bauhan, 1973, p. 18—

My first vivid memory of [his cousin] Abbott Thayer recalls him crouching in the dust of School Street, demonstrating to Mrs. Weeks, our teacher of drawing in the public schools, his newly evolved theory of Obliterative Gradation, or Protective Coloration—the foundations of his discovery of why birds and animals are difficult to see against their natural background.

The demonstration consisted of two small wooden ducks, mounted on wires, both painted the color of the dirt on which they stood, representing for the moment a natural background. One duck stood out solid and rotund, but the other Thayer had painted darker on its back and lighter on its belly until it had no more solidity than a cobweb. Suddenly a frightened cat bounded between Thayer’s legs, avoided the ungraded duck and dashed into and knocked over the duck it couldn’t see.  Cousin Abbott was as happy as a child at the cat’s vindication of his theory. Mrs. Weeks was entertained, if not enlightened.

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George Palmer Putnam, Wide Margins: A Publisher’s Autobiography. New York: Harcourt Brace and Company. 1942, p. 33—

We who were at Dublin [NH, where Abbott Thayer lived] were forever having first-hand lessons in protective coloring. Perhaps it would be dummies of birds set out in conspicuous places. Some were painted as in actual life, their upper parts dark, light below. Others had this reversed, with dark breasts and bottoms, and light backs. Those concocted in nature's way flattened amazingly against any routine background; the light below and the dark above, counteracting shadow and brilliance, made flat planes. These visual decoys we'd constantly trip over. But the others, where nature's process was reversed, stood out brutally in any environment.

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Mary Fuertes Boynton, ed., Louis Agassiz Fuertes: His Life Briiefly Told and His Correspondence. New York: Oxford University Press, 1956, p. 119—

[The Thayers’ book, Concealing Coloration in the Animal Kingdom] is weakened only by its tone…and by the ambiguity of some, and prominence of others, of the illustrations. For example, in the photographs of models used to display the effect of countershading, the shaded model disappears so completely that you cannot believe it was ever there in the first place; an altered or falsified picture would have been more persuasive.

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Fabian, “The Bushlover” in The Brisbane Courier (Queensland AU), October 9, 1926, p. 18—

An interesting experiment was made a short time ago at the British Museum of Natural History to demonstrate the great advantage of Nature’s commonest color arrangement among living creatures. Most of us have noticed that the great majority of animals are colored darker above and lighter below, and this is true, not only of nearly all our marsupials, but of most of the native birds as well. The rule holds good, too, in the case of fish, and, as more light comes from above than from below, the desired result is that the average fish in water becomes almost transparent and invisible. The British Museum experiment was carried out by Mr. [Abbott] Thayer, of America. He lined a large square box with gray flannel and placed in it two bird models, which were fastened to a rod running through the middle of the box. Both of these were covered with flannel, cut from the same material as that used to line the box, but one was painted dark above and white below, while the other was left in its plain gray. To the surprise of many observers the uncolored bird was decidedly the more conspicuous, and it was stated that at a few yards’ distance the painted bird, by counteracting the normal light and shade, was almost invisible. In Australia this color scheme for birds is a very common one. It is worth noting also that our really brilliant birds are almost always those of the dense shrubs, where protection is comparatively easy, while the birds of the plains and the open grassy spaces are far more protectively colored.

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Roger Pocock, “The Art of Concealment: Devices on Land and Sea” in The Mercury (Hobart, Tasmania) January 3, 1918, p. 6—

On the permanent staff of the Natural History Museum in London, there are two little wooden ducks…They are dressed in gray flannel, and each housed in a glass case with a gray flannel background. No. 1 duck is dressed in a plain gray flannel, and you can see her plainly at a hundred yards, because of the dark shadows cast by her neck and body, as well as by the brightness of her back. No. 2 duck is slightly whitened underneath to counteract the shadows, and slightly bronzed on top to counteract the light. Even at six feet the showcase appears to be empty. There is no sign of a duck. No hawk, no fox, no sportsman with a scatter gun and a small dog could possibly discover or kill the invisible duck unless she moved or made foolish quacks to guide her enemies. A great many years ago I wrote to Lords of the [British] Admiralty imploring them to go and see the invisible duck who could teach them priceless lessons in the art of concealing battleships and cruisers…

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James Devaney, “Nature Notes: An Experiment” in The Northern Miner (Charters Towers, Queensland AU), June 5, 1935, p. 4—

To illustrate just what it is which makes some birds hard to see, an interesting experiment was carried out by the American painter Abbott Thayer, who was also a keen Nature student. He wanted to prove how the darker back and lighter belly is a color scheme which tends to make birds less visible, so he made two wooden ducks as models. These he seated in a box on a perch, and both the interior of the box and the wooden ducks themselves were covered with brownish flannel. The ducks, exactly the same hue as their surroundings, were still plainly visible at a good distance. Then the experimenter [Abbott Thayer], who had an artist’s knowledge of color values, took his brushes and darkened the back of one and painted its under surface a whitish color. That particular duck then escaped notice at a little distance, and was absolutely invisible at about twelve feet, while the other one was very plain. Thayer carried out other experiments with imitation insects to show how Mother Nature gets her camouflage effects.

Camouflage Artist | Daniel Putnam Brinley

Daniel Putnam Brinley (1879-1963)

Above Daniel Putnam Brinley, Peter A. Juley & Son Collection, Smithsonian American Art Museum (J0001309).

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In earlier posts, we've talked about American muralist William Andrew Mackay, who was a major contributor to World War I ship camouflage. Over the years, we've been able to expand the list of those who worked with him as camouflage artists when he oversaw the painting of merchant ships in the New York area for the US Shipping Board. We've also found the names of those who studied with him at a camouflage school he established during the war, among them Harold Everitt Austin, Charles Bittinger, Henry Scott Bluhm, Thomas Casilear Cole, Maurice Lisso Freedman, Eric Gugler, W.S. Gephart, George Edgerly Harris, Kenneth S. Maclntire, Raymond J. Richardson, Frank Julius Spicker, Walter L. Ward, and Charles D. Bosisio. There were others as well.

A name that should be added is that of another muralist, Daniel Putnam Brinley (1879-1963), who not only worked on ship camouflage with Mackay, but may also have served in the US Army as a camoufleur. The primary documentation for this is in the Daniel Putnam Brinley and Katherine Sanger Brinley papers in the Archives of American Art. In that collection, there is a Brinley typescript that seems to be a chronology of his "camouflage work for navy" in Baltimore in October 1917. He mentions Mackay (referred to as "Mac") and Commander J.O. Fisher, who worked with Mackay on early experiments in ship camouflage. There is another interesting entry (dated October 21) in which he notes that, while visiting Fisher in Washington DC, he also "went over to the Camp [American University] to see what was going on with the [US Army] Camouflage Corps." In the following passage, he mentions three of the original members of that unit, William Twigg-Smith, William Nell and Barry Faulkner (a cousin of Abbott H. Thayer):

They [the Camouflage Corps] are still in rather a hectic state as far as I can see, and the chief interest at present is a vaudeville show [a fund-raising effort] they are getting up. I asked for Twigg but he was not around. I saw Billy Nell and he seemed to be enjoying himself although he said he had had a bad cold…They all wanted to know what had happened to me and when I told them they said they could not understand it especially Barry Faulkner as he said that the surgeon put him down as blind without his glasses! and some of the men said that they never had their eyes looked at, rather amusing is it not.

In a later entry, Brinley mentions another Army camoufleur, an illustrator named F. Earl Christy. Another document in the AAA collection is a letter written by Mackay on September 7 of that same year. Apparently Brinley (who had served in the Army in 1916, prior to the US participation in WWI) was hoping to be able to join the Army Camouflage Corps, and Mackay's letter is a verification of his experience and capabilities. It reads in part:

This is to certify that the bearer, Daniel Putnam Brinley has worked under my directions and is thoroughly familiar with the laws of light and form as applied to the term "Camouflage."

His knowledge of color for concealment is of greatest value and his ability to assist me on important experiments carried on for the United States Navy is of greatest importance.

One other odd connection: Of Brinley's artistic achievements, one of the best-known is a series of maps he created for the Liberty Memorial (the National World War I Museum) in Kansas City MO, which are on exhibit in Memory Hall. As noted in an earlier post, that same museum also has the surviving portion of a huge diorama, the Panthéon de la Guerre, completed in 1918 by French artists who were serving as army camoufleurs.

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[Added June 23, 2014]: Brinley was also a member of the American Association of Painters and Sculptors (AAPS), which organized the Armory Show in New York in 1913. Shortly after its opening, they held an uproarious dinner at Healy's Restaurant in honor of "our Friends and Enemies of the Press." Elizabeth Lunday, in The Modern Art Invasion (Guilford CT: Lyons Press, 2013, p. 75), describes what happened as the evening wore on—

Perhaps inspired by the dancing waitresses, artist D. Putnam Brinley, who stood nearly seven feet tall, began a high-kicking contest, which he unsurprisingly won. Then the short, bearded sculptor Jo Davidson joined him on the floor, and he and Brinley danced a tango. A heavy knock was heard at the door and in walked a doddering old man in a long white beard and an old-fashioned stovepipe hat. He introduced himself as The National Academy of Design, then joined Davidson and Brinley in a riotous Turkey Trot.

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 [Added January 15, 2016] Abel G. Warshawsky, The Memories of an American Impressionist. Ben L. Bassham, ed. Kent OH: Kent State University Press, 1980, p. 19—

My most difficult opponent in hand-wrestling was Putnam Brindly [sic], a young giant, six feet three in his socks, whom I met many years later decorating army huts on the French front when my brother and I were similarly engaged. He was then so tall that he could do stencils on the ceiling without using a ladder.

additional info

Camouflage Artist | Robert Lawson

Vintage pencil sharpener (c1938). P.D. Whitson Collection.

Above Vintage pencil sharpener by Walt Disney Enterprises, which produced an animated film of The Story of Ferdinand by Munro Leaf in 1938. Two years earlier, Robert Lawson had illustrated the original book version (New York: Viking 1936). P.D. Whitson Collection.

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The papers of American illustrator and US Army camouflage artist Robert Lawson (1892-1957) are in the University of Minnesota Children's Research Collections. Other materials (mostly illustrations, including Lawson's book mock-up for Ferdinand the Bull) are also housed in the Frederick R. Gardner Collection of Robert Lawson in the Rare Book Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia. Among the latter materials are a sketchbook and several letters that date from 1917 to 1918, at which time Lawson was stationed in France, as a US Army sergeant, assigned to camouflage.

For a detailed account of the service of Lawson and others in the American Camouflage Corps, see Barry Faulkner's Sketches from an Artist's Life (Dublin, New Hampshire: William Bauhan, 1973). While in France, the American camoufleurs produced amusing theatrical shows for the French children whose mothers were aiding the war effort by constructing camouflage nets. According to Faulkner, "It was his [Robbie Lawson's] sense of fantasy and humor which made our musical shows successful."

A news article about Lawson (with excerpts from an interview) was published in the Charleston Daily Mail (Charleston SC) on Sunday, November 30, 1930, on page 1 of the magazine section. Written by Rose Henderson and supplemented by Lawson's illustrations, the article was titled ROBERT LAWSON—MASTER OF FANTASY. The following are Lawson quotes, excerpted from the article—

In 1914 two great calamities occurred. The World War in Europe was one and my having to work and attempt to earn a living was the other. Europe's struggle is now more or less settled, but mine still continues.

From 1914 to 1917 I was a New Yorker and began to absorb things they hadn't taught in art school. My art activities were varied and pretty bad…

The French and English having by that time muddled the war all up, I joined the Camouflage Section of the Army which, as you are well aware, after a few years in France managed to get things straightened out. That being over, I really got to work, and have been doing illustrations and commercial drawings ever since, except for a period when my wife [née Marie Abrams] and I did nothing but Christmas cards.

Later in the article, the author (Rose Henderson) writes—

The Camouflage Section was composed of artists, architects, interior decorators, movie people, sailors, stage hands—loosely organized, quite comic and very efficient. He [Lawson] enjoyed long nights of talk with painters, sculptors, architects and musicians, in cafes, in dugouts, freight cars, tents or on the vine covered terraces of southern France. There were freedom and honesty in those conversations among artist soldiers far away from home and profession and conventional habits of thought and life.

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! 

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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

 

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.

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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.

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*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