The Dazzle Painter | John Everett Revisited

John Everett (c1918), Lepanto

Above We've talked about British painter John Everett before. Last month, we featured the poster that advertised an exhibition of his Paintings and Drawings of the Camouflage of Ships that was held at the Goupil Gallery in London in 1919. Prior to that, we also reproduced his painting of the SS Sardinian in a dazzle-painting scheme.

We've now been fortunate to find two issues of a contemporaneous British weekly magazine in which a number of the paintings in that exhibit were reproduced in color. They were published in a magazine called Land & Water in the first two issues of February 1919. One, titled Lepanto, is reproduced above, while others are included below in this posting. They are interwoven with the text of a brief article in the same magazine (February 6, 1919, p. 31) by Haldane Macfall* titled "The Dazzle-Painter." Here is the article in its entirety—

The exhibition of paintings by Mr. John Everett at the Goupil Galleries will bring the camouflaging of our ships home to land-lubbers in a way that nothing but the reality could surpass; and they will in many ways be a surprise to such as see them. But the problem of disguise in color has been compelled upon us in pretty severe fashion by this shattering war; and it was a wise move on the part of the artist or his directorate to have a preface written for the catalog of the display by a sailor-man to explain the intention. Yet, even so, and before we wholly grasp the skill with which Mr. Everett has put the thing before us in his paintings, it is just as well to try to get at the "meaning of the act."

John Everett (c1918), Oil Tanker Off Greenwich

Of course, the whole idea of escaping notice or detection from enemy or quarry is seen throughout nature. The stripes or spots of snakes or cats, or the cat tribe, would seem, when seen individually and torn out of their natural surroundings, to be almost a willful act of nature to assist detection and give warning rather than to disguise. And precisely this same impression is given on first view of these gorgeously decorated camouflaged ships. Practice and theory, however, are as often not in the same boat; are, indeed, poles apart. As a matter of fact, camouflage is as remarkable in its paradoxes as fear. And its paradoxes were not wholly hidden even from Napoleon's day; for we know that, with his consummate grasp of things, he experimented in the visibility of color for uniforms, and discovered black to be one of the most vulnerable hues.

John Everett (c1918), Coronada

John Everett (c1918), A Bit of Black and White Dazzle

John Everett (c1918), Evening at Greenland Docks

 More recent experiments, before camouflage was compelled upon us by modern warfare, had already revealed some very extraordinary facts—especially to those of us who had to train men in musketry. For instance, it was found that if a man in a scarlet tunic were without the white straps of his accoutrements, he made a more solid target for the "bead" of the sharpshooter's rifle than if the scarlet were broken up with the stripes and crossings of the white straps. I think it may be stated almost as a law that a solid color comes nearest to the most deadly target—a dark silhouette. As a grim old musketry sergeant used to put it, it is "more restful to the shooter's eye."

John Everett (c1918), American Transports Coming to England

Johgn Everett (c1918), SS Onward in Dock

Now, whilst the guns, for instance, on land were best fogged from observation by camouflage, this problem was not quite so easy for the sea-folk. The sea-going camouflage artist had to wash out all land laws and discover the whole business anew. First of all, the main object of true camouflage, invisibility, had to go by the board. The light made invisibility pretty questionable; a light sky behind any ship converts it into a silhouette. The painter soon found this out; but his endeavor discovered to him a fact almost as important, and on that fact the camouflaging of ships was largely developed. Nothing could reveal this to the landsman better than the art of John Everett in these paintings, in which he has displayed the beauty that camouflage has wrought upon modern shipping in an age that we are wont to look upon as lacking in color and romance. The fact may perhaps be most simply stated somewhat thus: The painting of a ship upon the sea in stripes, or violently contrasted masses employed with skill, curiously enough makes it prodigiously difficult to make out her movement and intention of movement, to make out exactly how she is steering. As Lieutenant [Jan] Gordon neatly puts it, "Dazzle-painting attains its object, not by eluding the submarine by invisibility, but by confusing his judgment." It perplexes the submarine as to the ship's course, its range, and its size. Everett has deliberately treated these dazzle-painted ships with realism and set down his impressions without qualification; and the result is a convincingness that is untainted by any suggestion of trickery or special pleading.

John Everett (c1918), Russian Steamer

* Haldane Macfall (1860-1928) was a British military officer, who, oddly enough, was also an artist, book designer, art critic, historian and novelist.

more info

Herbert Barnard John Everett | An Interview in 1919

William Orpen, Portrait of John Everett (c1900)

In earlier posts, we've praised the wartime paintings of dazzle-painted ships by British artist [Herbert Barnard] John Everett (1876-1949). Many of his paintings are in the collection of the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich UK. The painting reproduced above is not a painting by Everett, but a portrait of him by William Orpen (c1900). Shown below is one of Everett's paintings of camouflaged ships, titled Convoy (1918). Both works by Orpen and Everett are in the collection of the National Maritime Museum, and are listed by Wikipedia as public domain.

According to art historian Gwen Yarker—

In the spring of 1918 he [Everett] was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to complete some drawings and paintings of wartime London docks and the Thames which were subsequently exhibited in America.

In connection with that American exhibition and a subsequent one in London, Anne Morton Lane (London correspondent for the New York Mail and Express) interviewed Everett and prepared a substantial news article. Published in the Richmond Times-Dispatch (Richmond VA) on Monday, January 13, 1919, p. 7, the article was accompanied by a portrait photograph of Everett (not shown here).

Reprinted below is the entire article—

“DAZZLE SHIPS” HELPED TO CONQUER HUN MENACE
Interesting Story Is Told in Pictures, the Work of Artist John Everett
FORM A REMARKABLE RECORD
Ship Painting in War Time Proves One of Many Methods Used by Entente Seamen to Puzzle German U-Boat Commanders

LONDON, January 12—Recently there was begun an exhibition in New York of pictures which have received the sanction of the British government to be shown outside Great Britain.

They are the work of John Everett, a highly interesting and distinguished English artist, who has made a specialty of seascapes and pictures of ships on the high seas and at rest in docks.

Early in the war, when the use of camouflage as applied to shipping became a special and practical portion of defense at sea, as the camouflage of guns, airplanes, munition sheds and other machinery of battles became a component part of war on land, Mr. Everett saw the wonderful possibilities that might accrue from a record of the commerce afloat as a pictorial history in color.

As we all know, now that hostilities have ceased, the mystery that, surrounded all ports and shipping in the allied countries was a necessary as it was dense. Therefore, it was only after many weary months that Mr. Everett, through personal persuasion, practical influence and genuine hard work, was accorded the privilege of His Majesty’s government of visiting the great docks of London and Liverpool, in order that he might make pictures of the amazing transformation, wrought by paint and scientific knowledge upon the units of the fleet.

ALL MAY SOON SEE HOW CAMOUFLAGE WORK WAS DONE

And now that the U-boats have ceased from troubling and the submarines are at rest within British waters, by permission of the government, Mr. Everett is now able to display the fruit of his two or three years work in dockyards, at exhibitions in London and New York.

I went to see Mr. Everett the other day in his interesting and remarkable studio, which is situated off the beaten track of general traffic in a sort of side-tracked field in St John’s Wood, a well-known artists’ quarter of suburban London.

This studio of Mr. Everett’s is a converted barn of great size and with unusual lighting qualifications. Its walls are lined and a large portion of the floor space filled with pictures of ships.

All these ships display camouflage designs, and they represent many vessels that have plied their way between England and America in wartime, but also to many thousands, who have heard of the strange masquerading of ships on the high seas.

In England the painting and designing of sea-going vessels has been carried on under the direction of a department known colloquially as the “dazzle office,” and Mr. Everett was appointed as it illustrator.

Now that the curtain is being lifted from some of the amazing secrets of the admiralty and War Office, Mr. Everett has many interesting things to relate concerning the art of “dazzle-painting” as used, and the possibility of its continuation after the war.

“DAZZLE SHIPS” IS GOOD DESCRIPTIVE TERM

“Although the word camouflage is an excellent one that has been adopted by the Anglo-Saxon tongue since its uses in war time have been discovered,” said Mr. Everett. “I think that the descriptive title of “dazzle ship” is much more illustrative when applied to the use of this art at sea.

And, after all, it is not a very new ideas, because we are told that the Ancient Greeks painted their ships with big eyes and cheeks upon their bows to give them a terrifying expression of wisdom that might serve to confound their enemies.

But we moderns did better than this in war time: we had out ships painted in such a way that their strange colorings, and curious stripings and curves would puzzle the enemy and serve to give rise to uncertainty by dazzling the eyes of the watchful foe.

In fact, as I very early discovered in my work as official artist to the dazzle department, the object of ship painting in war time has really very little to do with the real meaning of the French word camouflage, which means the dissimulation of natural objects with the landscape by protective coloring.

Dazzle-painting was invented by the well-known sea painter, Lieutenant-Commander Norman Wilkinson, RNVR, and it is the only system which has practically solved the problem of the variation of light, and which attains its object not only eluding the submarine by invisibility, but by confusing its observers.

MAKES IT DIFFICULT TO CALCULATE SHIP’S COURSE

“By recognizing the limitations of paint, the art of dazzle as applied to ocean-going ships, pushes back these limitations as far as possible and makes the object of its being not invisibility but distortion: It makes the problem of calculating the course of a vessel extremely difficult.

Each design, as you will notice in the many pictures I have painted of ships, is entirely different from the other. No two dazzle-ships are alike in detail, either in color design, and the success of Commander Wilkinson’s inventions were so marked during all the weary war time months, that they were adopted by every entente nation with a marine service.

I think that this is one of the reasons why my pictures when they are seen in New York will be of extreme interest to Americans. They will then be able to see exactly the source from which came all those wonder ships that braved the perils of the sea during the past four years.

I have shown my portraits of these masquerading voyagers in English waters and British docks—settings that perhaps will be better appreciated nowadays in the New World, because it is so closely linked in these days with the old.”

BRITISH WARSHIP HIT AMIDSHIP, NO LIVES LOST

Among the pictures which will be seen by permission of the British government are HMS Victorian Bringing a Convoy of American Troops into London. Mr. Everett told me that this ship was afterwards torpedoed. She was hit amidships, but by some miracle she was brought into port and no lives were lost. Another picture is of the steamship Shuma discarding timber.

“This,” explained Mr. Everett. “is a ship with an interesting dazzle, showing a great deal of light sky-blue picked out with black and white.” Another ship shows a dazzled flour ship, and another the conversion of the Cunard steamship Nanerig into an armored cruiser.

Those and many other pictures of a like kind display with extraordinary clearness something of the practical side of what those who have “gone down to the sea in ships” have had to do in order to confound the enemy.

John Everett, Convoy (1918)

TELL VIVID STORY OF WAR TRAFFIC BY SEA

There is something very dramatic about these pictures of Mr. Everett’s. They give the story of the life of the sea, and the traffic across that great grim stretch of water between England and America with wonderful vividness. The artist confesses that these pictures, painted under circumstances both difficult and dangerous, are the most fascinating work he has ever undertaken.

“The painting of these pictures, which I regard as a sort of diary of the merchant service at sea during war time,” he said, “has given me an immense belief in, and admiration for, this dazzle theory; the whole point of it has been the deception of the submarine as to the course of the ship, thus causing a miscalculation of her distance. You ask me if the dazzle ships will die with war-time; I suppose for practical purposes they will do so.

But it seems to me a pity, for undoubtedly they have lent a beauty and color of ocean-going vessels and have transformed dirty old tramp steamers into objects of remarkable harmony of shape and hue.”

Certainly amongst the strange records which the war leaves behind it, these paintings of “dazzle ships” by John Everett will not be among the least curious. It has been suggested that the dazzled colors might still be used in peace time, not to distort, but to emphasize shipping. As Mr. Everett himself suggests, it certainly might be diverted from its past uses to the purpose of making a ship’s course more clear and thus bringing about an avoidance of collisions.

•••

Note Art historian Gwen Yarker (cited above) is one of seven speakers at a day-long "dazzle study day" that will take place from 9:30 am to 4:45 pm on Saturday, June 30 at the University of South Hampton, UK.  She will be speaking about John Everett's paintings of camouflaged ships.

have lent a beauty and color to ocean-going vessels

John Everett

In years past, we have posted images of and articles about the World War I-era paintings of dazzle-camouflaged ships by British artist (Herbert Barnard) John Everett. Those earlier blog posts can be accessed online here. A number of his artworks were exhibited in New York in 1918, as is described in a lengthy article and interview in the Atlanta Constitution, the full text of which is quoted below. It was apparently written by Anne Morton Lane (London correspondent for the New York Mail and Express) and appeared in other newspapers as well. The paintings by Everett in this post are in the collection of the Royal Museums in Greenwich UK, and are not the same as those reproduced in earlier posts.

•••

"DAZZLE ARTIST" TO EXHIBIT HERE Outcome of Naval Camouflage, Work of English Painter, Is Unique in Its Interest and Beauty, in Atlanta Constitution (Atlanta GA), December 22, 1918—

London, December 9—Toward the middle of December there will be an exhibition in New York of pictures which have received the sanction of the British government to be shown outside Great Britain. They are the work of John Everett, a highly interesting and distinguished English artist, who has made a specialty of seascapes, and pictures of ships on the high seas, and at rest in docks.

Early in the war when the use of camouflage as applied to shipping became a special and practical portion of defense at sea, as the camouflage of guns, airplanes, munition sheds and other machinery of battles became a component part of war on land, Mr. Everett saw the wonderful possibilities that might accrue from a record of the commerce afloat as a pictorial history in color. As we all know, now that hostilities have ceased, the mystery that surrounded all ports and shipping in the allied countries was as necessary as it was dense. Therefore it was only after many weary months that Mr. Everett through personal persuasion, practical influence and genuine hard work was accorded the privilege by his majesty's government of visiting the great docks of London and Liverpool in order that he might make pictures of the amazing transformations wrought by paint and scientific knowledge upon the units of the fleet.


John Everett


John Everett

Submarines at Rest
And now that the U-boats have ceased from troubling and the submarines are at rest within British waters. by permission of his majesty's government Mr. Everett will shortly be able to display the fruit of his two or three years' work in dockyards, at exhibitions to be held in London and New York.

I went to see Mr. Everett the other day in his interesting and remarkable studio, which is situated off the beaten track of general traffic in a sort of side-tracked field in St. John's Wood—a well-known artists' quarter of suburban London. This studio of Mr. Everett's is a converted barn of great size and with unusual lighting qualifications. Its walls are lined, and a large portion of its floor space filled with pictures of ships. All these ships display camouflage designs, and they represent many vessels that have plied their way between England and America in war-time, and survived the lurking dangers of enemy attacks. Others have succumbed to the perils of U-boats. These pictures form a remarkable record that must be of extreme interest not only to those people who have crossed the Atlantic in war-time, but also to many thousands who have heard of the strange masquerading of ships on the high seas.

In England the painting and designing of sea-going vessels has been carried on under the direction of a department known colloquially as the "dazzle office," and Mr. Everett was appointed as its illustrator.

Curtain Is Lifted
Now that the curtain is being lifted from some of the amazing secrets of the admiralty and war office. Mr. Everett has many interesting things to relate concerning the art of "dazzle-painting" at sea, and the possibility of its continuation after the war.

"Although the word camouflage is an excellent one that has been adopted by the Anglo-Saxon tongue since its uses in war-time have been discovered," said Mr. Everett, "I think that the descriptive 'dazzle-ships' is a more descriptive title when applied to the use of this art at sea. And after all, it is not a very new idea, because we are told that the ancient Greeks painted their ships with big eyes and cheeks upon their bows to give them a terrifying expression of wisdom that might serve to confound their enemies. But we moderns did better than this in war-time; we had our ships painted in ways such that their strange colorings and curious stripings and curves would puzzle the enemy and serve to give rise to uncertainty by dazzling the eyes of the watchful foe. In fact, as I very early discovered in my work as official artist to the dazzle department, the object of ship painting in war-time has really very little to do with the real meaning of the French word camouflage, which means the dissimulation of natural objects with the landscape by protective coloring. Dazzle-painting was invented by the well-known sea painter, Lieutenant Commander Norman WIlkinson, RNVR, and it is the only system which has practically solved the problem of the variation of light, and which attains its object not by eluding the submarine by invisibility, but by confusing its observers.

Limitations of Paint
By recognizing the limitations of paint, the art of dazzle as applied to ocean-going ships pushes these limitations as far as possible, and makes the object of its being not invisibility, but distortion; it makes the problem of calculating the course of vessel extremely difficult.

"Each design, as you will notice in the many pictures I have painted of ships, is entirely different from the other entirely different from the other. No two dazzle-ships are alike in detail, either in color or design; the success of Commander Wilkinson's inventions were so marked during all the weary war-time months that they were adopted by every entente nation with a marine service. I think that this is one of the reasons why my pictures when they are seen in New York will be of extreme interest Americans. They will then be able to see exactly the source from which came all those wonder ships that braved the perils of the sea during the past four years. I have shown my portraits of these masquerading voyagers in English waters, and British docks—settings that perhaps will be better appreciated nowadays in the new world, because it is so closely linked in these days with the old."

Among the pictures which will be seen in New York next month by permission of the British government are "HMS Victorian Bringing a Convoy of American Troops Into London." Mr. Everett told me that this ship was afterwards torpedoed. She was hit amidships, but by some miracle she was brought into port and no lives were lost. Another picture is of the steamship Shuma discharging timber.

Dazzled Flour Ship
"This," explained Mr. Everett, "in a ship with an interesting dazzle showing a great deal of light sky blue picked out with black and white." Another picture shows a dazzled flour ship, and another the conversion of the Cunard steamship Nanerig into an armored cruiser. These and many other pictures of a like kind display with extraordinary clearness something of the practical side of what those who have "gone down to the sea in ships" have had to do in order to confound the enemy.

There is something very dramatic about these pictures of Mr. Everett's. They give the story of the life of the sea, and the traffic across that great grim stretch of water between England and America with wonderful vividness. The artist confesses that these pictures, painted under circumstances both difficult and dangerous, are the most fascinating work he has ever undertaken.

"The painting of these pictures, which I regard as a sort of diary of the merchant service at sea during war-time," he said, "has given me an immense belief in and admiration for this dazzle theory; the whole point of it has been the deception of the submarine as to the course of a ship, thus causing miscalculation of her distance. You ask me if the dazzled-ships will die with war-time; I suppose for practical purposes they will do so. But it seems to me a pity, for undoubtedly they have lent a beauty and color to ocean-going vessels and have transformed dirty old tramp steamers into objects of remarkable harmony of shape and hue."

Certainly amongst the strange records which the war leaves behind it these paintings of "dazzle-ships" by John Everett will not be among the least curious. It has been suggested that the dazzled colors might still be used in peace time, not to distort, but to emphasize shipping. As Mr. Everett himself suggests, it certainly might be diverted from its past uses to the purpose of making a ship's course more clear and thus bringing about an avoidance of collisions.

John Everett

 

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 / 

FALSE COLORS: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage

CAMOUPEDIA: A Compendium of Research

on Art, Architecture and Camouflage

SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Camouflage Artist | John Everett

buy online

British painter John Everett (1876-1949) was born in Dorset, England, with the full name of Herbert Barnard John Everett. He studied at the Slade School of Art, and the Academie Julian in Paris. Although he was a close friend of marine painter Julius Olsson (who served as a WW1 ship camoufleur), Everett himself appears not to have designed camouflage—but he did make paintings of camouflaged ships.

Here's part of a note we found about him in an online article (which may no longer be online) by art historian Gwen Yarker at the Maritime Art Greenwich website —

In the spring of 1918 he [Everett] was commissioned by the Ministry of Information to complete some drawings and paintings of wartime London docks and the Thames which were subsequently exhibited in America…In his paintings Everett also explored the visual effects of dazzle painting. This was a form of camouflage put on ships during the war. He experimented with the formal possibilities these designs offered…

There's another online article by the same author on the relationship between Everett's family and the novelist Thomas Hardy, who was also a native of Dorset. Reproduced above is a reconstructed facsimile (reasonably accurate) of a poster from 1918, announcing an exhibition of Everett's paintings of camouflaged ships.

more info

Grandson of John Everett Millais as Camoufleur

Millais, Christ in the Carpenter's Shop (c1850)

Above A slide from one of my lectures on the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in a university course on the History of Design at the University of Northern Iowa. It is from a series of analyses of the symbolic and compositional systems in the paintings of John Everett Millais, in this case Christ in the Carpenter's Shop (1949-50). He was married to Effie Ruskin Millais (née Effie Gray), whose previous marriage to art critic John Ruskin had been annulled. While returning from London recently, I read a detailed account of this in Suzanne Fagence Cooper's Effie: The Passionate Lives of Effie Gray, John Ruskin and John Everett Millais.

•••

ARTISTS WANT TO CAMOUFLAGE in Sunday Times (Perth, Western Australia), January 28, 1940, p. 2—

LONDON—One of the artists whose name has been submitted to the War Office for camouflage work is Mr. Raoul Millais, grandson of Sir John Millais, the Pre-Raphaelite painter, who became president of the Royal Academy.

Mr. Millais has so far specialized in portraits of people and horses.

A member of the Beaufort Hunt, Mr. Millais has painted several horses belonging to his fellow followers of the pack.

His most notable horse subject was Blandford, the sire of several Derby winners.

US Camouflage Artists Preparing Ships for Testing

US Ship Camouflage Artists (1918) [colorized]

Above Our unfinished colorization of a World War I US Navy photograph, an original of which is in the collection of the National Archives and Record Service (No 165-WW-70C-001). It is described as having been received from the Navy Department, Bureau of Construction and Repair, on July 12, 1918, but there is no indication of when it was actually taken.

In this photograph, four ship camouflage artists are applying dazzle camouflage schemes to various sizes and types of wooden ship models. When completed, the models were stored on the shelves on the back wall. We now know the identities of these four artists, all of whom had been career artists in civilian life. They are (left to right) John Gregory, Gordon Stevenson, Frederick Judd Waugh, and Manley Kercheval Nash.

•••

Haldane Macfall [reviewing a London exhibition of paintings by John Everett of WWI camouflaged ships], "The Dazzle-Painter" in Land and Water (February 6, 1919), p. 31—

Now, whilst the guns, for instance, on land were best fogged from observation by camouflage, this problem was not quite so easy for the sea-folk. The sea-gong camouflage artist had to wash out all land laws and discover the whole business anew. First of all, the main object of true camouflage, invisibility, had to go by the board. The light made invisibility pretty questionable: a light sky behind any ship converts it into a solid silhouette. The painter soon found this out; but his endeavor discovered to him a fact almost as important, and on that fact the camouflaging of ships was largely developed. Nothing could reveal this to the landsman better than the art of John Everett in these paintings, in which he has displayed the beauty that camouflage wrought upon modern shipping in an age that we are wont to look upon as lacking in color and romance. The fact may perhaps be most simply stated somewhat thus: The painting of a ship upon the sea in stripes, or violently contrasted masses employed by skill, curiously enough makes it prodigiously difficult to make out her movement and intention of movement, to make out exactly how she is steering. As Lieutenant [Jan] Gordon neatly puts it, "Dazzle-painting attains its object, not by eluding the submarine by invisibility, but by confusing his judgment." It perplexes the submarine as to the ship's course, its range, and its size. Everett has deliberately treated these dazzle-painted ships with realism and set down his impressions without qualification; and the result is a convincingness that is untainted by any suggestion of trickery or special pleading.

•••

Below Following completion of the dazzle painted ship models, each was carefully tested in an observation theatre, which simulated its appearance through a periscope at sea against different backgrounds, varied lighting , and in various weather conditions). Shown here are two camouflage artists from the same Navy unit, in the process of testing the models. The person at the periscope is architect Harold Van Buskirk, executive officer in charge of the two camouflage subsections (the one shown here was in Washington DC; the other at Eastman Laboratories in Rochester NY). Standing beside him is Kenneth MacIntire, an artist who headed the workshop in which the wooden models were made.

Ship Model Testing Theatre (1918) [colorized]

For more information on American and British WWI ship camouflage (both detailed text and images), see James Taylor's recent book on DAZZLE: Disguise and Disruption in War and Art (2016).

a rich beauty of color is given to camouflaged ships

Charles Dickens (c1860s)

C. Lewis Hind, ART AND I. New York: John Lane Company, 1921, p. 323—

“…Paul and John Nash are originals, They were a cult before 1914. Now they are emerging, but they keep their quaint vision. Spencer Pryse is a classicist, who dips classicism into a bath of graceful and forceful modernity. Muirhead Bone was a past master in architectural drawings before the war. The sights he has seen have had little effect upon his art. He remains a searching and exquisite draftsman. John Everett has seen the rich beauty of color in the camouflaged ships. He is the most gallant of the war artists; he gives to these ships a beauty—“

John Everett, Lepanto (1918)

I paused, because Mr. X was not listening. He was smiling at his own thoughts, and as he smiled he began to turn the pages of [Charles Dickens’] American Notes.

“You used the word ‘gallant,’ sir. It is a favorite word with Mrs. X, and on more than one occasion she has applied it to Charles Dickens. And upon my word, sir, I think Madame is right. In the early portion of American Notes he refers to the beauty of the ladies of Boston, and on page 108 he uses almost precisely the same term in reference to the ladies of New York.

“There was no camouflage about Charles Dickens—no, sir!”…

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

Art and Camouflage | John Everett

Above Watercolor painting by UK artist John Everett of the SS Sardinian (Allan Line) in 1918. The original is in the Beaverbrook Collection of War Art, Canadian War Museum (CWM 19710261-0141).

••

From the Daily Kennebuc Journal (Augusta ME), 10 July 1918, p. 8—

A.H. Webber, a sign writer, who for the past two and a half years has made his home in this city, enlisted Tuesday at the local naval recruiting station in the aviation section of the US Naval Reserves as a camoufleur, and will take his final examination today at Portland. If he is successful in the examination he will leave soon for Mineola, Long Island, for a two-months course of training. Mr. Webber is the first young man from this section if not from the entire state to enroll in the naval reserves as a camouflage artist.

Herbert Barnard John Everett | More Information

As a quick follow-up to our previous post, here's the link to a wonderful essay by art historian Gwen Yarker on British painter Herbert Barnard John Everett. We are delighted to learn that a biography is in process—he deserves it, with more than 1,000 of his oil paintings in UK collections.

Camouflage Artist | Gordon Stevenson

Model Painting Room (c1918)

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

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

Gordon Stevenson mural, Construction Site (1909)

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

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

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

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

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

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

Camoufleurs in the drafting room

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

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

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

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

Illustration by Gordon Stevenson (c1940)

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

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

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

Gordon Stevenson, portrait of Homer St. Gaudens

taken round back the warehouse and painted brown

Above One of the slides from a talk I’ve given on the Pre-Raphaelite artists of the 19th century, showing how John Everett Millais made use of edge alignment, symbolism, and broken continuity (thereby triggering closure) in his painting titled Christ in the Carpenter’s Shop (1849-50).

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As described in a news article, Millais’ grandson was the portrait painter Heskith Raoul Lejarderay Millais, known as “Liony” Millais. His grandmother was of course Effie Gray (well-known for the annulment of her marriage to John Ruskin), and his father was the artist and travel writer John Guille Millais.

Raoul Millais was especially known for his paintings of horses, as was his friend and contemporary Alfred Munnings. Both were outspoken critics of the work of Picasso and other avant-garde Modernists. It is said of Munnings that “When his light grey Arab horse Maharajah was refused boarding to sail to the Boer War ‘for reasons of camouflage,’ he took it round the back of the warehouse and dyed it brown.”

Despite his age, and various physical injuries from hunting, Millais served in the Scots Guards during World War II, in the process of which he commanded the military unit that guarded Rudolf Hess—who “spoke very good English and seemed to be the most unlikely Nazi.”

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ARTIST WANTS TO CAMOUFLAGE in Sunday Times (Perth, Western Australia), January 28, 1940, p. 2—

London—One of the artists whose name has been submitted to the [British] War Office for camouflage work is Mr. Raoul Millais, grandson of Sir John Millais, the pre-Raphaelite painter who became president of the Royal Academy.

Mr. Millais has so far specialized in portraits of people and horses. A member of the Beaufort Hunt, Mr. Millais has painted several horses belonging to his fellow followers of the pack.

His most notable horse subject was Blandford, the sire of several Derby winners.

Lewis W. Rubenstein / WWII US Navy ship camoufleur

Everett L. Warner (front center), with WWII ship camoufleurs

In 1993, Stephen Polcari, Director of the Archives of American Art, conducted a tape-recorded interview with American artists Lewis W. Rubenstein and Erica Beckh Rubenstein, in which Lewis Rubenstein spoke about various aspects of his artistic life, including his camouflage service during World War II.

Among the things that Rubenstein recalled were his associations with scientist Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, with whom he had been college friends at Harvard, and a government official named Richard C. Morrison, who had also been at Harvard and was in charge of a camouflage research project in Boston, which involved the development of a camouflage paint (invented by Samuel Cabot) called “haze paint.” He also worked with Land on research that pertained to underwater vision in relation to submarines.

Rubenstein was originally from Buffalo NY. After graduating fom Harvard in 1930, he received a fellowship to study in Europe. When he returned, he taught the Boston Museum School and the University of Buffalo, then joined the faculty at Vassar College. A newsletter from that school announced in early 1942 that Rubenstein had taken leave from teaching “for the duration of the war,” in order to contribute to US Navy camouflage.

In his interview for the Archives of American Art, he shared specific information about his wartime service, albeit the interview transcript is replete with phonetic name spelling mistakes. “…I went into the navy in ship camouflage…” he states, “…[where] I worked with Charles Benninger [sic, Charles Bittinger]…”

He continues: “[Dazzle] was one kind of [ship camouflage], and the other kind was just low visibility, and I did both. I was in that camouflage unit during the war. There were a number of artists in that too. [Bittinger]  was an artist and his half-brother was a member of the National Academy—his half-brother was John Maron [sic, John Marin]. He once invited me to lunch with [Marin]. And Edward Warner [sic, Everett Longley Warner], who was a painter, was the other half of that. Eliot O’Hara was in the group, [as was] Bennett Buck, [and] a number of artists.”

The remaining mention of camouflage in the interview is filled with mistakes, and more confusing than informative. But, just for the record, it goes like this:

Polcari: Yeah, I remember—Ellsworth Kelly was in the camouflage unit.

Lewis Rubenstein: He wasn’t in that one.

Polcari: No, he wasn’t in that one.

Erica Rubenstein: Maybe he was in army camouflage.

Polcari: Yeah, army camouflage, that’s right. Rourkie [sic, Arshile Gorky] taught camouflage—[Gorky] taught camouflage in New York City.

Rubenstein: (Laughs.) He made the best use of it, I think.

Polcari: Yes, he did. Well, that’s true, that he used it in his style. He used it in his style.

Reproduced above is a photograph that was given to me by one of the ship camoufleurs who served in the same unit as Rubenstein. It was given to me by Robert R. Hays, who is on the far right in the photograph. He was one of those who served under Everett L. Warner, who is shown holding the ship model at the front center. I’ve identified the other four members of Warner’s team who are standing around him. They are (from left to right) H. Bennett Buck, Sheffield Kagy, William Walters, and Arthur Conrad (father of artists Daniel Conrad and Tony Conrad). The only person whom I haven’t identified is the man in the very back at the extreme left. I now wonder if that might be Lewis Rubenstein, but I can’t confirm it. As shown by a later photograph of Rubenstein (at the bottom of this post) it might well be him.

Lewis W. Rubenstein / ship camoufleur

ONLINE VIDEO TALKS

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

Ship Camouflage | Wartime Dazzle Painting

L. Campbell Taylor (1919), watercolor

In the last year of World War 1, a writer named Hugh Hurst published an illustrated article on ship camouflage titled "Dazzle-Painting in War-Time" in International Studio (September 1919, pp. 93-99). It remains one of the most eloquent essays on the subject, and is of additional interest because it included reproductions of a handful of wonderful paintings of camouflaged ships in the settings of various harbors. The artists represented were (Reginald) Guy Kortright, John Everett (whom we've blogged about before), and L. Campbell Taylor, all of whom were "war artists," in the sense that they had been assigned not to design camouflage but to record their encounters with these entrancing while also bewildering forms. 

In Hurst's article, one of the paintings that was reproduced in color (as shown above) was Taylor's Dazzle Ships in Canada Dock, Liverpool. Watercolor, 1919. We found it well worth the sleuthing to track down an original copy of Hurst's article (it's reasonably easy to find through inter-library loan, and there is an online full view also*). In addition, the entire article and its illustrations have been reprinted (albeit in black and white only) in our recent collection, SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook (2012). Here are the opening paragraphs of Hugh Hurst's delightful essay—

To the lover of the ship for the ship’s sake the appearance of our docks in the great ports during the war may perhaps have come as somewhat of a shock, but to the artist the transformation from a monotonous uniformity to a scene presenting a pageant-like array of strong color and strange designs this change can have been nothing but a joy. Certainly it has proved to many painters not merely a stimulus to record one outward aspect of the war, but a direct source of inspiration towards design and color. It was the artist who in devising means for saving tonnage provided, by accident as it were, these splendid scenes of fleets clothed in their war paint, such as were never before and, possibly, may never again be seen.

Although the accompanying drawings naturally lose some of their effect by being reproduced in black and white, to the uninitiated they may perhaps appear sufficiently bizarre. Those who were not fortunate enough to see the docks at one of our great ports during the war may imagine the arrival of a convoy—or, as frequently occurred, two at a time—of these painted ships, and the many miles of docks crowded with vessels of all sorts, from the stately Atlantic liner to the humbler craft bearing its cargo of coal or palm oil, each resplendent with a variety of bright-hued patterns, up-to-date designs of stripes in black and white or pale blue and deep ultramarine, and earlier designs of curves, patches, and semicircles. Take all these, huddle them together in what appears to be hopeless confusion, but which in reality is perfect order, bow and stern pointing in all directions, mix a little sunshine, add the varied and sparkling reflections, stir the hotchpotch up with smoke, life, and incessant movement, and it can safely be said that the word “dazzle” is not far from the mark. 
* Thanks to John Simpson for the link.