construction of a WWI dummy tank by british in france

Above Dummy tank being constructed in France by British forces, 1916.

•••

SWANSEA'S TANK in The Cambria Daily Leader (Wales), October 23, 1919, p. 8—

Somebody at the War Office is evidently deeply concerned that towns' war savings presentation tanks shall be properly maintained and prevented from deterioration into rust and desuetude. Swansea's unattended and unapproachable. because of the trivial paling round it, evidently would not please him, to judge from the following note from the W.O. Publicity Department on tank presentation:—"Each city and town so honored should arrange for proper care and attention to be bestowed upon its charge, so as to keep it always a proud and fitting memorial to an arm of the Service which did so much to save the lives of many thousands of citizen soldiers. The tank should rest upon a firm concrete foundation of ample area, so that on wet days visitors may not carry mud into the interior. The exterior of the hull and the roof should be well cleaned and thoroughly painted at regular intervals, and the wonderful 'dazzle' and 'Futurist camouflage effects may be used with advantage. But if camouflage is not possible, a good serviceable brown color may be used without departing from realism, as, indeed, many tanks went into action plainly painted and with no attempt at cunning disguise. The tracks or road chains should be very thoroughly treated, else they will soon show signs of rust and decay and, as it is not practicable to keep them bright, they should be painted a color as near the natural steel as possible. A tank crew dearly loved to have all the inside of the machine white in color, and it is doubtful if their choice can be improved upon, with a dull black for the engine. For the rest, brass work and steel rods should be kept bright and. clean, and this duty could well be included in the daily routine of an employee of the local council. In wet weather, and at night, the roof of the machine should be covered with a tarpaulin." All this, emanating evidently from a man who knows his tank well, contrasts strangely with talk of using the presentation for scrap iron. It is a counsel of perfection, of course, but Swansea ought to get some useful tips from it.

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

tacoma builds phony tank for WWI liberty loan parade

Above WWI American dummy tank in Liberty Loan parade, 1918

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CITY TANK IN LOAN PARADE in Tacoma Times (Tacoma WA) April 06, 1918, p. 8—

One of the novel features of Saturday’s Liberty parade was a miniature “tank” furnished by the city streets department. The tank was built from a new caterpillar tractor just purchased by the city. Although the caterpillar tread of the city machine does not go over the top of the body, as it does in the battle tanks, the machine was camouflaged by scenic artists so that it bore a startling resemblance to the new war terrors. It was armed with a half dozen fierce-looking guns. Commissioner Atkins announced that he would guide the city tank through the streets.

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

Women's Dazzle-Painting Team at NYPL

Above and below are public domain news photographs (1918), showing members of the Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps applying dazzle camouflage to a tank that has been placed in front of the New York Public Library. In the first photograph, the high contrast disruptive shapes are beginning to be evident. In the photo directly below that (apparently taken earlier), one of the tricks of the trade is revealed: they are marking in the boundaries of the colors with white chalk, a method that was commonly used by the teams who painted camouflaged ships.

•••

Anon, ANOTHER KIND OF CAMOUFLAGE, in Popular Science, November 1918, p. 18—

In war work, as in nature, there are two kinds of camouflage coloration: one is designed to make the camouflaged object harder to distinguish from its surroundings, the other to make it even more conspicuous than it would otherwise be. The latter, however, in war work is restricted to objects used for recruiting purposes. The ocean-going freighters at anchor in the North River, off Manhattan Island, or in any other large harbor, are examples of the first kind. The [object in the three photographs shown here] is an example of the second, undergoing its camouflage painting at the hands of members of the Camouflage Corps of the National League for Women’s Service.

The tank stands in front of the New York Public Library. The young women at work in overalls are making its surface a crazy-quilt of the most violent and incongruous colors imaginable—colors that command the attention of every passer-by. The object is to aid recruiting for the tank service.

The effigy topping the tank’s turret, which seems to be a cross between a puma and a Teddy bear, was put there to make it harder—to overlook the tank.

•••

ANON, Women War Workers of the World, in The Touchstone and American Art Student Magazine (New York) Vol 3 (1918), pp. 513-514—

The National League for Women’s Service has recently inaugurated a Woman’s Reserve Camouflage Corps. Although the course is unofficial, it is the aim of the corps to be of service to the Government at home and abroad. This division of women’s service is yet too young to have accomplished notable results, although they have helped, under Henry Reuterdahl’s supervision, in painting the land battleship Recruit in Union Square, camouflaged the tank in front of the Public Library, New York City, painted trench tables so that they look like the land and shrubs all around them, and painted snipers’ suits for men to wear when creeping among the rocks and bushes.

a modern bus like noah's ark with 12 pygmies inside

Tudor Hart's WWI tank camouflage

Above A couple of years ago, we blogged about the World War I camouflage innovations of a Canadian artist named Percyval Tudor Hart (1873-1954). It was a detailed, fairly lengthy blog, and may merit being revisited here. He proposed a style of camouflage in whch he covered the surfaces of a ship, tank and sniper's cloves with multi-colored, high-density zigzags. I actually saw the camouflaged gloves many years ago in an exhibition in Ontario. Above is an AI-colorized photograph of his tank camouflage proposal.

•••

Ilya Ehrenburg, People and Life: memoirs of 1891-1917. London: MacGibbon and Kee, 1961, p. 184—

Here is how in 1916, I described the first tank I had seen: “There is about it something majestic and nauseating. It may be that once there existed a breed of gigantic insects; the tank is like them. It has been brightly decorated for camouflage; the flanks resemble the paintings of the Futurists. It creeps along slowly, like a caterpillar; trenches, bushes, barbed wire, nothing can stop it. Its feelers twitch: they are guns and machine guns. In it, the archaic is combined with the ultra-American, Noah’s Ark with a twenty-first century bus. Inside there are men, twelve pygmies, who innocently believe that they are the tank’s masters.”

Parades of Dazzle Camouflaged Floats

Ship Camouflage on Parade Float (c1918)

Above In the closing years of World War I, the American public's interest in camouflage (especially dazzle camouflage) was all but boundless. Examples of camouflage were included in nearly every parade, such as this float that features a dazzle-painted ship (as seen from the rear), surrounded by waves of papier maché. See also other photographs of camouflage-themed parade floats, as noted in an earlier post. We've since found descriptions of others.

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CITY TANK IN LOAN PARADE in The Tacoma Times (Tacoma WA), April 6, 1918, p. 8—

One of the novel features of Saturday's Liberty Parade was a miniature "tank" furnished by the city streets department. The tank was built from a new caterpillar tractor just purchased by the city. Although the caterpillar tread of the city machine does not go over the top of the body, as it does in the battle tanks, the machine was camouflaged by scenic designers so that it bore a startling resemblance to the new war terrors. It was armed with a half dozen fierce-looking guns. Commissioner [of Public Works Charles D.] Atkins announced that he would guide the city tank through the streets.

•••

CAMOUFLAGED TANKS PARADE ST. LOUIS in the Oklahoma City Times, April 10, 1919, p. 4—

St. Louis, April 10—Twenty camouflaged tanks, similar to those used at the front, paraded through the business section today as part of a reception in honor of Major General Leonard Wood, commander of the central department of the army, who is in St, Louis in the interest of the coming Victory loan campaign. The tanks were operated by returned soldiers.

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BATTLESHIP FLOAT OF MARINE ELECTRICAL WORKERS IN PARADE in The Boston Globe, September 3, 1918, p. 7 (see news photograph below)—

One of the most striking features of the parade was the float of the Marine Electrical Workers of America—the Navy Yard local union. This was a model of a battleship, about 50 feet long and 20 feet high, with wireless cracking and guns shooting confetti.

Another attractive float was that of the Painters' Association from the Navy Yard, showing a camouflaged torpedo boat destroyer model, over which was hung the inscription, "This Is How We Fool the Kaiser's U-Boats."

Dazzle Ship Float in Boston Parade (1918)

French Tank Camouflage

According to the text on a postcard, this is a "French Renault Tank used in the [First] World War by the Republic of France…[and] is one of a number that was given to the United States in partial payment of the French War Debt. It still retains its original number, R.F. 2324 as it did during the war. This tank was presented to the James L. Noble Post, No. 3, Veterans of Foreign Wars of Altoona PA and was put in commission by members of that post."

Camouflage Amusement Ride

Camouflaged tank amusement ride (1920)

World War I ended in 1919. A year later, in the January 1920 issue of Popular Mechanics, there was a short illustrated article about a new amusement ride, with the headline "Rough-Riding Tank as Amusement Car" (p. 113). As shown by the illustration above, it consisted of—

a set of four counterfeit tanks, dressed in camouflage paint, that bump around the inside of a wooden bowl with about an acre of surface. The make-believes are light, with transverse seats like a street car, and run on wheels instead of crawling on a flat tread; but they stagger along over carefully designed bumps and rough spots with satisfying realism…As an electric motor in the base rotates the tower, centrifugal force carries the tanks nearer and nearer the edge of the bowl, adding further zest to the adventure.

Notice there's a close-up view of one of the tanks in the bottom left corner of the illustration.

Actually, there was an even earlier link between amusement rides and camouflage, as shown by the two photographs below. As early as 1896, there were American amusement rides that were widely known as "razzle dazzle" (you can see that printed on a sign on the striped merry-go-round amusement ride in the first photo). In the same year, artist and naturalist Abbott H. Thayer began to publish his theories about protective coloration in nature, and now and then he used the terms "dazzle" and "razzle dazzle" in reference to high difference or disruptive camouflage. I suspect he was alluding to these popular amusement rides.

Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs (c1896)

Camouflaged War Relic Train in Burlington, Iowa

Above Lloyd Harrison. WWI-era poster, c1917. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs.

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BIG GUN HAD SOME KICK. War Relic Train With Whippet and Camouflage Disguise in Burlington. The Burlington Gazette (Burlington IA), April 22, 1919, p. 6—

…A war relic train consisting of three flat cars and a baggage car disguised in blue, white and yellow camouflage arrived in Burlington yesterdayat 5 o'clock. The train also carried two coaches for the soldiers who guarded the trophies.

The flat cars were loaded with war relics of all kinds and descriptions. A partially destroyed French fighting plane, minus the wings, an unexploded areo bomb, a twelve-inch cannon and several smaller fire arms were on one car. The other two flat cars were loaded with two camouflaged German Whiz-bang cannons which were captured by the Yankees before the close of the war, machine guns and other fighting periphernalia, used by the Huns.

A small but effective Whippet tank very artistically disguised in blue and yellow paint was also an attraction to the crowd of about fifty people who gathered at the Union station to see the relics….

Above World War I camouflaged French tank. Courtesy Library of Congress Prints and Photographs. Hypothetical color scheme added.

fires in American camouflage section buildings in WWI

Moulin de la Galette, Paris

GASOLINE EXPLODES IN CAMOUFLAGE SCHOOL in Seward Gateway Daily Edition (Seward AK), February 2, 1918, p. 4—

PARIS, Feb. 2—A gasoline can exploded this morning as some American soldiers were filling an automobile tank at the famous Moulin de la Galette dancing hall [as pictured above], now used as a camouflage school for the American army. The tank also exploded and two American soldiers were seriously wounded.

•••

OFFICIAL PAPERS BURNED Mice and Matches Blamed for Fire in Washington, in Indianapolis News (Indianapolis IN), April 6, 1918, p. 9—

WASHINGTON, April 6—Fire of unknown origin last night destroyed the upper floor of a building near the great State, War and Navy Building [as pictured below], occupied by the Navy Bureau of Construction and Repair and the Camouflage Section. Some supplies and papers were burned, but the damage is said to be insignificant.

No one was in the building except a watchman, who thought the flames started in a piles of papers beneath a stairway, and that mice and matches probably were responsible.

State, War and Navy Building, Washington DC

Diary of British camouflage artist Solomon J. Solomon

Solomon tank camouflage scheme

There is an article from the Boston Sunday Post, dated December 24, 1922 (p. B3), titled WAR ‘CAMOUFLAGE ARTIST’ COMPLETES PORTRAIT OF BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY. It tells the story of the delayed completion of a painting of  the Coronation Luncheon at Guildhall, an event that had taken place in 1911. Its culmination was put off by World War I. The artist assigned to complete it was Solomon J. Solomon, who is described in the article as “the most famous portrait painter in Europe today.”

When the war began, Solomon assumed that it would not greatly interfere with his artistic career, but it “interrupted him absolutely” because the government soon discovered [by way of his own prompting] that he was the one man in England familiar with the art of camouflage.” He was sent to France, to learn about that country’s section de camouflage, which was under the command of Lucien-Victor Guirand de Scevola. For a time, Solomon was the head of British Army camouflage, during which he oversaw the construction of imitation dead tree observation posts, advocated the use of overhead garnished nets (the shadows of which broke up the shapes of things below), aka "umbrella camouflage," and proposed designs for tank camouflage.

Solomon was the author of one of the first books on wartime deception, titled Strategic Camouflage (London: John Murray, 1920). Earlier, he had also published The Practice of Oil Painting and Drawing (London: Seeley, 1910).

Until recently, I had not realized that there is another book about him which contains extensive excerpts from his wartime diaries. That source is Olga Somech Phillips, Solomon J. Solomon: A Memoir of Peace and War (London: Herbert Joseph, 1933). Quoted below are a few passages (pertaining to camouflage mostly) from Solomon’s diary.

[p. 127] The French observation post trees were round; I made mine oval, so that that part of them facing the Germans should appear too small for a man to ascend; this was later adopted by the French.…

It was proposed in my report that I should need the assistance of three painters. I had made up my mind about these—two scene painters about whom I would consult Mr. Joseph Harker—and a theatrical property maker…

Harker had recommended to me Oliver Bernard—a small man, very deaf, who staged the operas at Covent Garden—a good organizer. He, on his return from New York, was on the Lusitania when she was torpedoed. He was rescued from the sea. He couldn’t swim a stroke and attributed his luck to a mascot he always wore, and which—in his opinion—would safeguard him throughout the war.

[p. 134] B—— spoke of his admiration for Giron[sic] de Scevola, the head of the French camouflage, who had, after much difficulty from the French Army people, to accept the idea of camouflage…

Scevola would only accept the rank of lieutenant, but stipulated that no one should be above him. He was—and is—a fashionable Parisian portrait painter, dressed very smartly, and invariably wore white kid gloves…

[p. 143] Who says the painter can’t organize? This seemed to be a military prejudice. When an artist is composing an imaginative picture his organizing faculties are at full stretch.

[p. 149] 11th March—…Major Alexander wanted some dummy heads—these dummies were made to attract fire, so that German snipers could be located—the line of fire would be indicated by putting a small stick through the back and front holes made by the sniper’s bullet.

Hitherto, adopting the French plan, we had mounted these heads on round sticks, and Major Alexander told me that often these would tend to turn in the hand, so that the exact direction was lost. In future I mounted the heads on square sticks fitted with a square sheath with cross feet; ths could be kept firmly in place. I had modeled several heads from our men who sat for them and I became quite a decent sculptor. The clay model was cast in plaster from which moulds were taken, and the pressing of successive sheets of paper saturated with flour paste into the moulds produced a sort of Guy Fawkes mask. We turned out quite large numbers of these papier mache “Tommies” which I colored from life.

…the Secretary of the French Camouflage Corps, asked me to model him, which I did, he wanted to send a paper mache reproduction of himself to his wife at Bordeaux. This added to our stock of types.

[p. 155] Wednesday, 22nd March—Giron[sic] de Scevola invited us all to dine with him at our little hotel at Wimereux, and an excellent meal it was for so small an inn. The Frenchmen sang and made witty speeches and kept it up till quite late. I was looking forward to returning the compliment when next de Scevola came our way, but that was not to be. We artists got on well with our French confreres.

disruptive tank camouflage and amazing landscapes

WWI French tank camouflage

Edgar Ansel Mowrer, FRENCH ‘INCHING’ FORWARD, Alternatives Before Hitler in Argus (Melbourne, Victoria, Australia), October 11, 1939, p. 8—

I am looking through a gun barrel in the turret of an almost subterranean fort on the Maginot Line. It is one of the most amazing landscapes in the world…

The whole section is camouflaged like an autumn landscape—France put their camouflage in the hands of painters like Picasso and de Segonzac, and what they do not know about color values is not worth knowing.

Ghost Army Film Screenings

Click here to see film trailer

For more than six years, documentary filmmaker Rick Beyer has been working on a film about a World War II secret US Army unit that specialized in deceiving the enemy on the battlefield, using inflatable decoys (tanks, trucks, jeeps and so on—including the phony tank shown here), sound effects,  misinformation, and other tricks. Officially known as the 23rd Headquarters Special Troops, they referred to themselves as the Ghost Army. Among its members were a number of people who later became well-known designers and artists, including Ellsworth Kelly, Bill Blass and Art Kane.

The film is nearly finished now. It's being screened at various locations around the country, and a trailer has been posted online. Click above to access that, and to learn about the screenings.

WWII camoufleur as much use as fridge at North Pole

Above WWI camouflaged-painted tank-like vehicle with rotating turret gun.

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Hugh B. Cott, “Camouflage” in The Advancement of Science. Vol 4 No 16, January 1948, pp 308-309—

[At the beginning of World War II] the possible methods, scope and usefulness of camouflage were by no means generally appreciated. Perhaps you will allow me to give a single example. When early in 1941 I took up my first service appointment, the Brigadier to whom I reported for duty welcomed me with these words—he said: “A camouflage officer is as much use to me as a refrigerator at the North Pole.” It happened that we were no where near the North Pole, but in tropical Africa, where a refrigerator would have been a very useful piece of equipment. However, I was not unduly discouraged by this somewhat chilly reception.

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-priced books on camouflage / free shipping

to camouflage the inside—so I don't know where I am

Roland Davies

Above Roland Davies, WWII British Short Sunderland Flying Boat.

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James Thrall Soby, “Genesis of a Collection” in Art In America, Vol 49 No 1, 1961, p. 79—

[Abstract Expressionist artist] Matta [Roberto Sebastián Antonio Matta Echaurren] was born in Chile and therefore presumably exempt from American military service. Nevertheless, he worried about being drafted, and came to me in the Museum [of Modern Art]  to ask whether he could be assigned to camouflaging tanks if he were called up. I explained that this sort of camouflage was less commonly used in the Second World War than in the First because of improvements in aerial reconnaissance. “You don’t understand,” he said. “I don’t want to camouflage the outside of a tank so the enemy can’t find it. I want to camouflage the inside, so I won’t know where I am.”

RELATED LINKS

 Cubism and Camouflage

Cook: The Man Who Taught Gertrude Stein to Drive

Art, Design and Gestalt Theory: The Film Version

Percyval Tudor-Hart | Canadian Camouflage Artist

Percyval Tudor-Hart (1934)

I first heard about the camouflage proposals of [Ernest] Percyval Tudor-Hart (1873-1954) years ago. Born and raised in Canada, he was a painter, teacher, and color theorist. Somewhat later, I saw photographs of a ship that he had camouflaged, a tank, and a pair of sniper’s gloves. In each, he had covered the surface with multi-colored, high-density zigzags. More recently, I saw the camouflaged gloves themselves in an exhibition sponsored by the Imperial War Museum (as shown below).

Tudor-Hart's camouflaged sniper's gloves

His proposal for WWI British ship camouflage (detail)

At one point, I ran across a reference to a Welsh medical doctor named Julian Tudor-Hart. The oddness of the family name prompted me to email him, asking if he were related to the Canadian camoufleur. As it turned out, it was his grandfather. I’ve since learned that Julian died only recently at age 91. I had intended to follow up with additional questions (he had offered to respond), but regrettably, I dropped the ball.

Cover of DVD package for Tracking Edith

Only a few weeks ago, I was fortunate to find a new documentary titled Tracking Edith. It is a film biography of Edith Tudor-Hart (1908-1973), an accomplished Modern-era photographer who studied at the Bauhaus in Dessau, worked as a Montessori kindergarten teacher, and recruited spies for the infamous Cambridge Marxist group that included Kim Philby, Anthony Blunt, and other intellectuals. Her story is at once fascinating and tragic, and the film is well worth watching (although I would not have included its unfortunate animations).

The father of medical doctor Julian Tudor-Hart was Alexander Tudor-Hart, who was the son of artist-camoufleur Percyval Tudor-Hart. Both of Julian’s parents were physicians, and after the couple’s marriage crashed, Julian’s father married Edith Tudor-Hart (née Suschitzky), who then became his stepmother. Julian, who seems to have been both kind and likable, is interviewed in the film.

I have since located what may be the only biography of Tudor-Hart the camoufleur. It’s a 250-page book by Alasdair Alpin MacGregor (who knew the artist), titled Percyval Tudor-Hart: Portrait of an Artist (London: MacMillan, 1961). Because I was searching primarily for information about his involvement in camouflage, the book was less than helpful. There is a short chapter on camouflage, describing the endless frustrations he faced when he submitted his proposals to the British government. “One department after another, having kept him on tenterhooks for varying periods, decided that his camouflage was impracticable and that further experiments were, therefore, inadvisable,” with the result, as MacGregory concludes, “one cannot but deplore that the time and energy he expended on all this had not gone into his painting.”

I think I first became aware of Tudor-Hart's connection with camouflage while reading Guy Hartcup's pivotal book, titled Camouflage: A History of Concealment and Deception in War  (New York: Charles Scribner's, 1980). Hartcup briefly mentions him in a section that reads in part as follows—

Another exponent of camouflage was P. Tudor-Hart, a painter who had made an intensive study of color values in Paris and had expounded his theories to a small coterie of artists in Hampstead before the war. Tudor-Hart was generally critical of current military camouflage and explained that when objects on land were concealed they tended to absorb rather than to reflect light. At sea, the opposite occurred. He proposed to paint a geometrical pattern of alternating stripes of warm and cold colors, graded according to the area they covered. At a distance these colors were supposed to mix optically, assuming a general gray tone. Tudor-Hart believed that because the colors were pure and arranged in a mathematical relationship they would "fluctuate with the increase or decrease in light."

Of related interest may be my recent essay on the camouflage proposals of American artist William Andrew Mackay, which also made use of the optical mixture of colors.

In the end, neither Tudor-Hart's paintings nor his camouflage proposals were likely his greatest achievements. He probably accomplished more as a mentor for younger artists (in Paris and London), a color theorist, and art restorer. His camouflage proposals came from his quasi-scientific view of color, and, more specifically, his beliefs about the ties between color and sound. In March 1918, at the apex of his interest in camouflage, some months before the war would end, he published a technical article in The Cambridge Magazine, titled “The Analogy of Sound and Color.” While obscure at the time (and even more so now) his theories influenced his students, one of whom, a decade earlier in Paris, was the American painter Stanton MacDonald-Wright. Together with Morgan Russell, MacDonald-Wright launched a style of painting based on color and abstraction called Synchromism.

Among Tudor-Hart’s other students were British artists Theodora Synge (cousin of Irish writer J.M. Synge), Donald Wood, W.T.H. Haughton, Margaret Beale, Richard and Sydney Carline, as well as their sister Hilda (who married Stanley Spencer). Among his American students were John Edward Thompson, George Carlock (Elbert Hubbard's nephew), and Richard H. Bassett. It was of particular interest to find that one of his favorite pupils was New Zealand-born painter Owen Merton, father of the admired American writer and Trappist monk, Thomas Merton.

Front right: Lieutenant Wilford S. Conrow, WWI camoufleur

As for camouflage, I was also pleased to find that another of his students was Wilford S. Conrow, an American portrait painter who served during WWI as a commissioned officer in the American army’s first camouflage corps, officially established on September 6, 1917, at Camp American University, near Washington DC. Lieutenant Conrow, according to a news article at the time, “helped to organize the company” and “is in charge of all the paints and materials used at the camp.”

According to MacGregor (who claims incorrectly that Conrow was “director of American Camouflage during the Second World War”), when Conrow was asked by a fellow student who to recommend as an expert on color, he replied, “What a stupid thing to ask!… Why not consult our own teacher—the Darwin of Color?”

As for biological roots, it seems that Tudor-Hart came from the intermingling of two families, the Tudors of Boston and the Harts of Montreal. The Tudors were the wealthy half, thanks largely to the fortune of Percyval Tudor-Hart’s grandfather, entrepreneur Frederic Tudor, more commonly known as the Ice King. He amassed that fortune by harvesting ice from New England (including Walden Pond), then shipping it to the American South and the tropics. A key enabler in this ambitious enterprise was Nathaniel Jarvis Wyeth, who harnessed horses to a plow-adapted blade to more efficiently cut the ice. It was interesting to learn that this Wyeth was an ancestor of the artist Andrew Wyeth.

The father of the Ice King was a wealthy Boston lawyer named William Tudor. During the American Revolution, he was the legal advisor for George Washington, and, in 1775, was appointed Judge Advocate for the Continental Army. His son the Ice King was his third son, but his first son, also named William Tudor, was equally interesting and certainly just as successful, but not in business nor in law. After graduating from Harvard, he became a leading Boston citizen and a prominent literary figure. He was a co-founder and the first editor of The North American Review.

One of the pleasures of research is to unearth unexpected links—so-called degrees of connection. In this case, it was fun to dig up two. First, for almost two decades, I was the art director for The North American Review, which had awakened from its dormancy in 1969, when it was revived at the University of Northern Iowa. Through the efforts of its editor then, Robley Wilson, it soon gained recognition as one of the top literary newsstand periodicals, and a persistent competitor with The New Yorker, Harper's, The Atlantic Monthly, and other famous, well-staffed and amply-funded magazines. By the time Wilson retired in 2000, it had won the National Magazine Award for Fiction twice and was a finalist for that award five times; placed stories in the annual O. Henry anthologies four times, in the Pushcart Prize annuals nine times, in Best American Short Stories eight times, in Best American Sports Writing and Best American Travel Writing.

The second connection is that, when I was in graduate school in the early 1970s at the Rhode Island School of Design, my finest teacher at the time was a literary scholar named C[harles] Fenno Hoffman. He didn’t use his given name, and I believe we called him Fenno. It was he who introduced us to Lytton Strachey's Eminent Victorians. He died in 1996, but over the years I concluded that he was descended from (and named after) a famous ancestor, Charles Fenno Hoffman, a prominent American writer. The link to Percyval Tudor-Hart is that the wife of the elder William Tudor (Washington’s legal advisor) was Euphemia Fenno, and together they started a line that branched out from the Fenno (Hoffman) bloodline.

•••

Postscript (added May 4, 2019): D. J. Enright, Interplay: A kind of Commonplace Book (Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 6—

One good thing about not going to a public school was that you didn't get recruited to spy for the Soviet Union. I was at Cambridge, but nobody approached me. Scholarship boys didn't have a guilty conscience (or not the right sort).

•••

New find: It would seem that we've located a photograph of Percyval Tudor-Hart (c1937) working in his studio. He is putting the finishing touches on a large-scale painted version of the Garden of Eden, with Adam and Eve. It was later translated into a magnificent tapestry. It includes a chimpanzee on the back of a zebra, a closer version of which is visible in the photograph of Tudor-Hart at the top of this blog post.

•••

Postscript (added May 6, 2019): This gets a tad confusing, but it may be worth the effort. Among Percyval Tudor-Hart's uncles was Frederic Tudor (1845-1902), who had an artist-daughter named Rosamond Tudor (1878-1949). She was the granddaughter of the Ice King.  In 1904, she married an aviation pioneer and naval architect named William Starling Burgess (1878-1947). He later worked with Buckminster Fuller on the Dymaxion Car. One of their children, née Starling Burgess, changed her name to Tasha Tudor and became well-known as a children's book author and illustrator. There is a brief item in the November 1918 issue of Flying (p. 908), which reads as follows—

Mrs. W. Starling Burgess, the wife of Lieutenant Commander Burgess, the noted aeronautic engineer, and naval constructor, has joined the Navy, having been given a civilian appointment to the Camouflage Section of the Navy—the first of its kind.

Mrs. Burgess is well known as "Rosamond Tudor." Her paintings have been exhibited under that name. She has just completed a portrait of Father Zahm, the famous explorer who was with Colonel Roosevelt in the latter's exploration trip in the interior of Brazil.

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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

WW1 Camouflaged Misogyny—After a Fashion

Civilian examples of camouflage (1917)

Above Camouflage and fashion cartoon (digitally restored) from The Ogden Standard (Ogden UT), December 3, 1917, p. 11.

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Anon, CONEY ISLAND WAR THRILLS in The World's News (Sydney AU), August 23, 1919, p. 19—

Americans are experiencing many thrills of near participation in the war this summer. A great number of novel reproductions of action along the battle fronts, in the air, and at sea, are to be seen at Coney Island (New York) and similar holiday resorts.

…A popular device…is called "Treat 'em rough," which was the motto of the American Tank Corps during the war. Patrons are strapped in seats and sent through an extraordinary series of up and down and sidewise motions that only the strongest constitutions can successfully stand. This new "stunt" is advertised as guaranteed to reduce fat and put anybody in trim for an army career.

Coney Island is attempting daring water novelties this summer in the form of bathing suits for feminine wear, consisting of single-piece garments with zigzag stripes. They are called "camouflage suits"—because it is so difficult to see them.

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Anon, from BRITISH AND FOREIGN in Alburry Banner and Wodonga Express (New South Wales AU), August 8, 1919, p. 35—

Girls so cleverly camouflaged that it was difficult for the audience to tell whether they were looking at the faces or the backs of the girls, greatly amused the Queen [of England] who attended an exhibition of drill given them at the Savoy Hotel, London, on a recent occasion.

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From the Melbourne Punch (Victoria AU), May 16, 1918, p. 32—

A lately returned traveler from Sydney tells us we are awfully dull down here—that life up there is so Continental it is dine out at some hotel or restaurant (of which there are many to choose from) every evening, wearing a whitewash complexion, watermelon lips, a camouflage skirt, and the merest whisper of a dinner blouse; then on to a theatre; thence to a cocktail supper.

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Anon, from THE WEEK in The World's News (Sydney AU), April 13, 1918, p. 14—

Dame Fashion is a fool, and that is putting it mildly. She decrees that women must adopt camouflage for their dress. What need is there for any such thing? Hasn't woman camouflaged ever since Eve took Adam in over the apple? Of course she has, and will continue to do it just whenever it suits her ideas. If she wants to win a post that wheedling won't accomplish, she camouflages her face with tears, and lo, she arrives at the desired end. And what she can do with rouge and powder passes all understanding. It is camouflage carried to a fine art. What man could tell that the short-frocked, finely-complexioned, sixteen-year-old hatted person at a distance was over forty and the mother of six? That is camouflage, and with a vengeance, and yet Fashion wants to add to it by use on dresses. If it means that plain cotton stuff at 1s 2d the yard, six yards for 6s 6d, can be so faked by the skillful dressmaker as to appear like a silk confection at a guinea a yard, by all means camouflage. But if it means turning a probable ten-guinea costume into a twenty-pounder, then camouflage is a miserable failure. Everything depends upon what that fickle jade, Fashion, is after. Usually she strives to deplete the purse of the hardworking husband or father, but if in this case, as in the case of ships, the object is to save—then camouflage for ever.

The Perils of Painting a Camouflaged Ship

Hypothetical dazzle schemes (2018)

Above and below. These are not historic ship camouflage schemes. They are hypothetical dazzle designs, produced by simply "looking through" cut-out silhouettes of ships, with various public domain photographs behind them. Produced by Roy R. Behrens (2018).

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Unsigned, THE WHY AND HOW OF DAZZLE. Daily News (Perth, Western Australia). May 19, 1919, p. 4. Reprinted from the Christian Science Monitor—

They certainly did look strange, those ships; patched and lined, like grandmother’s crazy quilt with broad black, white and blue bands and stripes, gray, green, and almost every color save the mythical sky-blue-pink.

Passengers on the ferries lined the rails and made many and varied comments on their strange appearance.

“You see,” said one Solomon to his unwise friend, “that camouflage’ is a great thing all right! Yes, sir, that ship there when she gits to sea will just go plumb out of sight, Pop! You don’t see her at all when she gets to sea, so the Dutchmen can’t shoot her with their periscopes.”

“Seems to me,” said his friend rather doubtfully, “that I can see her better than that gray one over there.”

“Pshaw! That’s because you aren’t in a submarine. When she gets to sea, she blends right in with the waves and matches right-on to ‘em.”

The two in conversation did not know that the dirty overalled man with jointed fishing pole and roll of plans standing near by, an amused listener to the conversation, had just finishing applying a crazy quite design to the steamer in question, and knew that the reason for the lines and patterns was not by any means to hide the ship from the submarine observer.

Early in the war, when the German were sinking everything in sight, stern necessity, ever the mother of invention, evolved many systems of marine camouflage. Several Americans—Mackay, Brush, Herzog and Toch—had systems which were called by naval men “low visibility,” the object imitating the water and sky. This was in some degree successful under certain conditions; indeed in some weathers the ship so painted would disappear at a distance of a mile. But for one thing, this low visibility would have been a great success.

This thing was the same machine set in a shell of a submarine called the “skin hydrophone,” a very delicate and accurate device for detecting the sounds of a ship’s propeller. A ship could be discovered long before she could be seen from the low elevation of a periscope, and her course fairly accurately determined. That is, accurately enough to tell if she were coming toward or going away from the listener. Also, under certain conditions, it could be told if she were going to the right or left.

Such an instrument disposed once and for all of low visibility as an absolute protection, and it remained for an English artist, Norman Wilkinson, Command, Royal Navy, to invent a new and effective way of combating the submarine peril.

Broadly stated, his method of camouflage was a distortion, an optical illusion based on varied elements of perspective and drawing. Ships painted in this manner seemed to be sailing an entirely different course from the one they really followed, much to the confusion of the submarine observer.

Some people seem to think that to sink a ship a submarine has only to sight it. This is hardly the case. Quite complicated computation of the vessel’s distance, speed, and course are necessary together with wind, current, and temperature of the water; and a good many ships were missed only by a few feet, but still missed, and a miss was as good as a thousand miles.

That was the problem for the camoufleurs, when the United States entered the war [in 1917]. The Royal Navy sent Wilkinson across the Atlantic to impart his method. Early last year a Boston advertising man, Henry C. Grover, was engaged by the [Emergency Fleet Corporation] Shipping Board to organize a department of camouflage for all our immense merchant marine which was to be built. The thing was absolutely new and untried, but he got a group of artists and draftsmen together, and with his usual genius for getting results, the thing was humming in a month.

Painting a ship is very simple—theoretically—just take a brush and painting and “go to it”—just like that. Of course we had a plan, a design furnished by the Navy Department, which showed a view of the two sides of the ship (the sides were different, by the way), and a husky gang of painters, but ship painting is different from painting a house; much larger, oh vastly.

Hypothetical dazzle schemes (2018)

When we first stood under the bows of a newly launched tank steamer and looked up at her, she was an appalling thing to a novice. Thirty-five feet out of water the bow towered, a sheer wall of steel, flaring outward at the top to make it doubly difficult. On that curving rampart we had to make accurate lines in curves, and beautiful parabolas (I think that is the word). At any rate, I would have given the old family clock and all my loose change just that minute for a pair of foot warmers.

It wasn’t so bad after we started, though the first ship was far from a model. Slinging stages over the bow, we put two painters on them with poles and chalk, and by gestures and megaphoned instructions from the wharf had them spot in points on the curves and connect them.

It is quite impossible, unless one is highly experienced, to draw these curves and lines when standing close to the ship. One needs to be 100 feet away properly to judge the proportion; and the effectiveness of the design depends largely on its accuracy. Later we learned to use a mirror, flashing the spots on the side one after the other along the course of a curve, and stretching a long chalk line from the straights snapped by a man in the center. Sometimes we used long “battens,” strips of thin board, bending them to the proper curves, and a 20-foot fish pole with a brush on the tip helped to strike in the more complicated forms. Strange as it may seem, the hardest forms to apply to a ship are long parallel straight lines which converge to points near bow or stern. For some reason we never could seem to get the angles just right.

It was no place for a dainty man, when worked on the floats alongside, for a rain of things descended on us. Bolts, hot rivets, scraps of iron, and heavier things like lumps of wood and heavy pieces of rope, when working in the shipyards, come down at unexpected intervals. No use yelling up at the man on the deck to be careful—with 500 men hammering and drilling and reaming, conversation is at a discount. You can only dodge and grin cheerfully at the painters.

Then again tugs and steamers have a way of pulling a heavy wash into the slips when one is on a high staging 12 feet or so above the water. The float rocks violently without the slightest warning, and if you have fallen overboard at the first roll you drop on hands and knees and grip until the float is fairly still again. When this is past, and you are congratulating yourself, some enthusiastic painter tips over his pail of dark blue, or whatever colors he happens to be using, directly above you, perhaps, or the cook happens to think of some refuse that needs disposing of, and then there are holes in the side of the ship where water—hot or cold—pops out without warning. A camoufleur is not a camoufleur unless he falls overboard regularly once a week.

Still, it was a great game while it lasted, taken with the interesting experimental work on little models in a mechanical theatre with a sea foreground and a painted strip to imitate sky—this in the intervals of ship-painting. The dazzle painted ships are now fast disappearing under their peace coasts of gray. May they never again need the services of American camoufleurs.

detailed information sources

 

commuters now wear goggles to counter dazzle paint

Above US government photograph of a dazzle-camouflaged British tank steamer, the Cadillac (c1918). AI colorized black and white photograph.

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RAZZLE DAZZLE THE LATEST CAMOUFLAGE in the Dayton Daily News (Dayton OH), February 24, 1918—

NEW YORK, Feb 23—Camouflage is all right on the high seas but its a nuisance in port.

So say skippers on the harbor ferries here.

A great liner with razzle, dazzle decorations almost cut a Lackawanna ferry in two when the steamship emerged from her self-established concealment the other day.

With the port full of pied pigment, commuters are wearing goggles to avoid paint shock. Whereas the early idea of camouflage was to make the ship blend into the sea and air, the latest wrinkle is to so dazzle enemy gunners that they are unable to properly adjust their range finders.

The steamer that almost sank the ferry boat was a work of art. Light blue covered her bow for 20 feet then appeared three green and white semi-circles while a great black band ran across the poop deck at the sheer strake to a point on the waterline abaft the foremast. It was thirty feet broad. This black streak sprang from an arrangement of black and white concentric circles.