Still More on H. Ledyard Towle | A Hue Guru

Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps (1918

H(arold) Ledyard Towle was an American artist and industrial colorist, who was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1890. After studying art at Pratt Institute, and at the Art Students League (under Frank Vincent DuMond and William Merritt Chase), he embarked on what he thought would be a career as a painter of portraits and landscapes. However, as he later admitted, his experiences as a camouflage artist during World War I changed many of his attitudes, including how he looked at art.

During WWI, Towle was a camouflage instructor in the 71st Infantry Regiment of the New York State National Guard. In that capacity, he provided camouflage training for troops who were preparing to fight on the battlefields in Europe. He also taught a course about camouflage at the Columbia University Teachers College. Before the war ended, he himself shipped off to France as a machine-gunner and camoufleur at the Front.

While still in New York, he also took on an unusual task, which led to a flood of news articles. In early 1918, approval was made to establish a Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps, and Towle was designated as the instructor for a unit of about thirty-five to fifty civilian women volunteers. The training was largely conducted out of doors in New York, on the grounds of the Billings Estate, which is now the museum The Cloisters.

Full-page article on Towle's women camoufleurs (July 1918)

Towle’s course for women was not only about camouflage, since it also offered training in military drill, boxing, and pistol and rifle marksmanship. Because (or so it was commonly said at the time) women were naturally inclined toward sewing, one of their primary challenges was to make hooded camouflaged “observation suits,” with which they could blend in with natural settings. There was no shortage of news stories about the unit’s activities (enlivened by photographs, along with appropriate quotes from Lieutenant Towle). In July 1918, there were widely published stories about these women camoufleurs (jokingly referred to then as “camoufleuses”) because they had applied a camouflage scheme to a scaled-down wooden battleship (called the USS Recruit) in the middle of New York City in Union Square. In fact, it was not a genuine ship, but a landlocked replica built in 1917 for use as a novelty recruiting station. It was someone’s suggestion that it would be even more novel, generate more publicity, and encourage more recruits to join if its surface was totally covered in brightly-colored, abstract shapes (in “dazzle camouflage”). The women camoufleurs in Towle’s course were chosen to accomplish this. They did the whole thing overnight—and it was the talk of the town the next morning.

When Captain Towle returned from the war, surely he was discouraged to find (like others of his generation) that American Impressionism was no longer in vogue, having been swept aside by Modernism that had begun with the Armory Show in 1913. Beginning in 1919, he worked for the US Treasury Department in Washington DC, in connection with the Victory Liberty Loan Committee, then moved on to positions at several advertising agencies, including one at which he was in charge of the DuPont Company account.

A breakthrough in his career took place in 1925, when he was hired by DuPont (working in cooperation with General Motors in Detroit) to establish a Duco Color Advisory Service in New York. As documented in a book by Regina Lee Blaszczyk on the history of color use in industrial production (The Color Revolution), this enterprising artist-turned-camoufleur became phenomenally influential at DuPont, General Motors (where he worked with other former camoufleurs, and with Harvey J. Earl), and Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company, as industry’s first and foremost “color engineer.”

Towle moved from New York to Detroit in July of 1928, when General Motors launched an “art and color section” and appointed Towle its “chief color expert.” He talked about his career transition in news articles at the time. “I went into the war,” he explained, “thinking art belonged to the chosen few. I came out knowing that it belonged to every urchin in the street. Working on wartime camouflage problems taught one how to use color with a purpose. I saw the futility of painting portraits to collect dust in museums, and turned to camouflaging industry and its products of everyday life.” His disdain for the art world is evident in his statement that “The automobile manufacturers and plumbing magnates are rivaling the Medici of old as patrons of art, and the resources of modern corporations are unlimited.”

In Blaszczyk’s book, she concludes that Towle was “America’s top automotive and paint colorist.” In the 1928 news article (cited earlier), he is described as "a pioneer in the movement which has brought lavender tea boxes, turquoise alarm clocks and a host of vivid motor cars…," a hue guru who “is now studying the 'color consciousness' of each section of the country, hoping to perfect hues which will satisfy the particular desires of each district."

In December 1934, Towle joined the Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company as director of its Division of Creative Design and Color. In 1941, he was interviewed in a news article about his proposal to set up a Pittsburgh civilian camouflage committee, for the purpose of determining which facilities in that city were most vulnerable to attacks by enemy aircraft, and “to design methods either to hide these places by breaking up their shadows or by making them harder to hit.”

From 1945 through 1950, Towle was a lecturer in Business Administration at the College of William and Mary. He died on November 8, 1973. His papers are housed in the Manuscript and Archives Department at the Haley Museum and Library in Wilmington DE.

...

Sources

Roy R. Behrens, False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2002.

_________, Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2009.

_________ ed., Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. Dysart, Iowa: Bobolink Books, 2012.

Regina Lee Blaszczyk, The Color Revolution. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2012.

“Color Engineer Sees New Epoch of Vivid Utility” in Waterloo (Iowa) Courier, April 10, 1929, p. 14.

“Raid Defense Gets Impetus in Pittsburgh” in Sandusky (Ohio) Register and News. September 16, 1941.

H. Ledyard Towle, “What the American ‘Camouflage’ Signifies” in New York Times. June 3, 1917, p. 14.

_________, “Projecting the Automobile into the Future” in Society for Automotive Engineering Journal, July 29, 1931.

_________, “Here It Comes” in American Magazine, September 1932.

“Ledyard Towle” (obituary), in New York Times, November 11, 1973, p. 73.

H. Ledyard Towle / artist, camouflage instructor / hero

The Army officer encircled in yellow above is Captain H. Ledyard Towle. He is conducting an outdoor instructional session during World War I, for the purpose of teaching camouflage to members of the American Womens Reserve Camouflage Corps. In earlier postings, we may have blogged about Towle more often than nearly anyone else. 

Not only did he work with this unusual women’s organization, he also became prominent as a “color engineer” in the years following the war. 

He had a significant influence on the postwar popularity of brightly colored automobiles, the colors used in American homes (inside and out), and the choice of colors used (for increased worker safety) in factory interiors. We’ve talked about his activities not only in various blogposts but also in an online video called Art, Women’s Rights, and Camouflage.

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Here now are two more recent finds about Towle’s doubly “colorful life”:

GLEANINGS FROM THE WORLD’S PRESS. What Colors Can Do. Queenslander (Brisbane, Queensland). August 8, 1929, p. 63—

“Who did this?” roared the president of a New York bank when he discovered an impish cartoon of himself on the back of an envelope. The guilty 13-year-old mail clerk jumped guiltily, but stood his ground, “I did, sir.” He held out shaking fingers, for he needed his three dollars a week. “I’ll rub it off for you, sir.”

“You will not!” snapped the president. He put the cartoon in his pocket, and his eyes twinkled at the young culprit. “If you can draw as well as that you’d better study art. Go to school nights if you have to, but leave my stationery alone, young man!”

In this unconventional way began the artistic career of Capt. H. Ledyard Towle, chief color expert for the General Motors Corporation and a pioneer in the modern movement to put beauty and color into the American home. If you have a lavender ice box, or a “sunlit” alarm clock, or a flame-colored sports car, the chances are he is responsible (writes Grace M. Fletcher, in “The World’s Work”).

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Carnegie Hero Fund Commission (online post). Harold Ledyard Towle, Merry Point VA. Act Details: July 5, 1951. Type of Act: Drowning—

Harold Ledyard Towle saved SheIva Jean Lankford from drowning, Merry Point, Virginia, July 5, 1951. While riding on an inflated tire-tube in the Carrotoman River, Shelve, 9, who could not swim, was swept into deep water by a strong wind and drifted 300 feet from the bank. Although warned by a physician to avoid exertion, Towle, 51, color engineer, ran 250 feet to the bank and entered the water. He waded 50 feet and with great effort swam 325 feet through waves two feet high to overtake Shelva. In a badly winded and weakened condition he took hold of Shelva and supported her. A man rowed a boat to them, and he and Towle aided Shelva from the water. Towle lacked strength to climb into the boat and grasped the gunwale. The man rowed towing Towle to wadable water, and all reached the bank. Shelva was extremely nervous, and she and Towle sustained numerous welts from stinging nettles. Both recovered.

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

More on Camoufleur H. Ledyard Towle

In earlier writings, we've documented the contributions of American women to camouflage, in connection with their service in the Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps during World War I. In the photo above, published in the Evening Public Ledger Philadelphia (May 13, 1918), four women camoufleurs are demonstrating their camouflaged "observer's suits." These had been constructed as part of a camouflage course, taught by a New York portrait painter, named H. Ledyard Towle, whom we wrote about recently with regard to his prominent later career as an industrial color consultant for DuPont, General Motors and Pittsburgh Plate Glass. Below is most likely a news publicity photograph of Towle at the time he was teaching this camouflage course.

More recently, we ran across an Associated Press news article in the Waterloo Courier (IA) (Wednesday, April 10, 1929, p. 14), which reproduces a photo of Towle, and describes him as a "chief color expert for the General Motors corporation" and "a pioneer in the movement which has brought lavender tea boxes, turquoise alarm clocks and a host of vivid motor cars."

Towle is briefly quoted about his experiences as an army camoufleur and camouflage instructor. "I went into the war thinking that art belonged to the chosen few," he recalls, but "I came out knowing that beauty belonged to every urchin in the street. Working on war-time camouflage problems taught me how to use color with a purpose. I saw the futility of painting portraits to collect dust in museums, and turned to camouflaging industry and its products of everyday life."

In June 1928, according to this news account, General Motors established an "art and color section," and Towle was appointed its "chief color expert." The article concludes: "He is now studying the 'color consciousness' of each section of the country, hoping to perfect hues which will satisfy the particular desires of each district." As we observed in an earlier post, the story of Towle's contributions (and other camoufleurs as well) to the uses of color in commerce has recently been published in Regina Lee Blaszczyk's The Color Revolution (2012).

Camouflage Artist | H. Ledyard Towle

Dazzle camouflaged USS Recruit (1918)

Published in recent weeks is a fascinating (and beautifully illustrated) new book by historian Regina Lee Blaszczyk, titled The Color Revolution (MIT Press). It is a well-researched study (as stated in the publisher's notes) of "the relationship of color and commerce, from haute couture to automobile showrooms to interior design, describing the often unrecognized role of the color profession in consumer culture," encompassing the period of 1850 to 1970. Of particular interest are recurrent references to the pivotal involvement of various WWI-era camouflage artists (especially H. Ledyard Towle) who, after the war, "applied their knowledge of visual deception to product design and created a new profession: the corporate colorist."

During the war, Towle had initiated a training course on camouflage for members of the Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps in New York (on the grounds of the current museum The Cloisters). As we have mentioned in earlier blogs, this unit of 35 to 50 women used camouflage as a publicity stunt, in support of recruiting, making early use of "reverse camouflage," as had been suggested by navy camoufleur Everett L. Warner. Overnight, in July 1918, they applied a dazzle camouflage scheme (designed by camoufleur William Andrew Mackay) to a wooden recruiting station aptly named the USS Recruit. This landlocked mock battleship was purposely not hidden—it was conspicuously located in Union Square in NYC (see photo above from the US Naval Historical Center, NH 41722).

comical British camouflaged shooting jackets in 1894

suggested shooting jackets

Above This is a Victorian-era cartoon (most likely British), published in 1894, artist and source publication unknown. The heading on the original was Comic Pictures, with a subtitle of Some Suggestions for Shooting Jackets. It has no direct connection to the article that follows below in this blog.

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CAMOUFLAGE IS JUST GOOD OLD BLUFF APPLIED TO WAR TACTICS: The Greeks and Their Wooden Horse Originated It, the French Developed It and the Yanks Excel at it, in Salt Lake Herald-Republican-Telegram, April 28, 1918, p. 10—

Some folk will take you clear back to the wooden horse of Troy for the origin of camouflage, and still others insist that it was first used somewhere beyond that. Then there are those who contend that it was first used in this, the Great World War.

We do know of instances where camouflage was used in the fairly ancient history of our own country, as a country or colony, and we are fairly well up on the methods of utilizing it now that it has passed through its comic supplement stage and all the comic artists have had their go at it.

The country is taking it in its serious aspect and the war department is encouraging the best thought which can be concentrated on the subject.

It has been said by teachers of the art that camouflage, simmered down and stripped of its glamor, is nothing other than the good old peacetime game of bluff applied to war tactics. If it be that, then who shall excel the American at it?

CAMOUFLAGE FOR 'ALL
In the accompanying illustration are shown only a few of the many, many means of utilizing the art in land warfare. There are countless other tricks on land and more being used in sea fighting and air battles.

The camouflaged road Is the result of hanging boughs and brown cloth drapes over a road as flies hang over a stage. Troop movements may be made over such a road in comparative safety. The big French gun In Flanders pictured here is painted so as to harmonize with a wooded background. The oddly striped tree climber may hide without great risk of being seen by aviators of the enemy, in a tree top while he does sniping or observation work. The papier mache horse being used as an intelligence or listening station appears to the enemy as a horse carcass, not a sight to arrouse suspicion in No Man's Land.

Then there is the camouflage of so wrapping a man that he appears to be a tree stump.

ABSENCE COST LIVES
The olive drab and khaki uniforms worn by our fighting men today are the outgrowth of the costly absence of camouflage ln the past. The blue uniforms worn in the Civil War were so much in contrast with any surroundings the soldiers might lave that the boys of the South could find their marks readily. And the gray of the Southern troops was little better. Both were infinitely more serviceable, however, than the bright red uniforms worn in earlier wars by the British.

Braddock's famous defeat by the Indians may be traced to the shining targets offered by the scarlet uniforms of Braddock's men for the arrows of the Indians, while the slim, brown figures of the natives blended so harmoniously with the tree trunks, the ground and the underbrush that the Britons could scarcely see where they were.

In the East have sprung up, since the war sucked the United States into itself, numerous schools for camoufleurs with official and semi-official training forces. Artists are going into the work with enthusiasm.

JUNGLE ITS ORIGIN
The American Institute of New York is beginning next month a series of lectures to engineers and painters on "Camouflage as an Aid to Modern Warfare." Lieutenant H. Ledyard Towle of the Seventy-First NYG machine gun company, an expert camoufleur and an artist and painter of some note, is to deliver the Ieclures.

In a lecture recently before New York artists, Lieutenant Towle sald:

"The Lord knows more about camouflage than any of us amateurs. Consider the lion and his tawny mane. In repose he Is a tiny undulation on the sunburnt clap; the zebra, with his stripes, lost in the shadow of the tall grasses: the leopard, with his spots, crouched for a spring amid the sun flecked leaves of a tree, who would suspect his presence? Isn't it astonishing that with such examples of the value of protective colors that we have done so little to develop the idea? The chameleon gives us the art perfectly demonstrated."

The French made the first effective use of camouflage in this war. They were the first to see that its results warranted specialization in it. After the Germans were turned back at the Marne and the lines of opposing trenches stretched themselves from the sea to the Swiss border, the fight in the west theatre resolved itself into a standoff as far as actual fighting was concerned, and the battle became one of wits. Fool the other fellow and victory was yours.

FRENCH WERE FIRST
The French withdrew from the fighting ranks artists, painters, metal workers, photographers, architects and engineers. A special corps of camoufleurs was formed. Their work has been marvelous.

The camoufleur's art has reached its apex in No Man's Land. The toe of a dead soldier's boot may house tho eye of a periscope and from the boot to a trench may run the tunnel through which the observer communicates. An old post, left standing after the wire entanglement it supported has been shot away, may have a periscope eye and a tunnel. A limp form in the uniform of a soldier enmeshed in the wire may lure comrades out to bring It in. And when they touch it they may set off a bomb which ends their quest—and their days.

The first company of American camoufleurs is encamped just outside Washington and volunteers and drafted men aro being sent there weekly from all parts of the country.

To use the words of Lieutenant Towle again:

"If the wit and technical cleverness of a few men can be the large factor in saving a regiment, then the time and trouble taken in the process of training for camouflage will have been well spent." 

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

lowly looking car made quite snappy by paint & brush

AUTO GOSSIP in The Times (Munster IN), February 2, 1920, p. 6—

Old Man Snodgrass, of the Auto Customs Shop, is the adeptest camouflage artist you ever saw. Not boasting at all, but says Art: “People have the doggonest time telling my work from new cars, but the difference is so little few people can tell.” What do you charge, Mr. Snodgrass, for painting a 1914 Lizzie that’s only “went” 211,999 miles? Will she look like new when you get through?

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Anon, CAMOUFLAGE USED ON CAR: Lowly Looking Car Made Quite Snappy By Use of Paint and Brush: Wartime Treatment of Shipping Used to Improve Motor’s Appearance, in The Daily Colorist, June 1929—

Does your car look too fat, too tall, too short, or just generally antique?

Cheer up. Just study a few good camouflage methods and you can with paint endow it with the lines of the finest racer. The dress principle that makes stout ladies look thin through vertical-lined clothes works for cars, too.

Camouflag[ing] autos to make them look larger, lower, more luxurious is the job of Captain H. Ledyard Towle, alumnus of Adelphi Academy and Pratt Institute of Brooklyn.

Before the war nothing was known of Captain Towle’s new kind of art. Now he has applied the principles of camouflage…to the painting of automobiles.

“Tommyrot,” the auto manufacturers told him when he first submitted his ideas. “A car is a car. You can’t improve its engine or even its appearance through camouflage.”

But they gave him a chance. He went quietly to work and repainted one model. Its sales increased with astounding rapidity. Now he supervises the painting of millions of them.

He got his ideas during the war. Before that he was a portrait painter. Previous to the age of thirty he had done the portraits of Captain Eddie Rickenbacker and other distinguished persons. Then during the war he acquired a more humble idea of art.

He learned that love of beauty and symmetry is not confined to the upper crust. The ordinary run of soldiers, the small farmer, the street cleaner, everyone, in fact, knows when something beautiful has been set before him.…

One of his experiments affecting the neatness of a car’s appearance consisted of taking a dark-colored car and painting a light strip along its entire length on a level with the top of the radiator.

Women camoufleurs Louise Larned and Rose Stokes

 Above Government photograph of an unidentified US Navy Yeoman (F) (or Yeomanette), c1918. Assigned to the Camouflage Section in Washington DC, she is assembling wooden ship models, which were later painted with camouflage schemes, and tested for effectiveness.

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Louise Larned (1890-1972), whose married name was Louise Larned Fasick (she married John E. Fasick in 1929), is sometimes confused with her mother, Louise Alexander Larned (1862-1949). Her father was US Army Colonel Charles William Larned (1850-1911), who briefly served with General George A. Custer in the Seventh Cavalry, but is more commonly known for having taught drawing at West Point Military Academy for 35 years.

Both parents were descended from a long line of military officers, and Louise grew up in the vicinity of West Point. She followed her father’s aptitude for drawing, as well as her family's tradition of serving in the military.

At the beginning of World War I, American women were not allowed to officially serve in the military, but they could provide supporting roles as civilians. In an article in the New York Tribune, Anne Furman Goldsmith, the New York chairman of “a proposed camouflage unit of women for service in the United States,” called for women to enroll in the organization. It was planned that they would be trained at a four- to six-week camp by a camouflage expert, and then sail off to duty in France. “There is no age limit for the volunteers,” the article stated, but “they must be physically strong and active, however, and have some knowledge of landscape, mural or scene painting.”

The acceptance of Goldsmith’s proposal was repeatedly delayed (according to the War Department, “it could not spare an instructor”) until the unit was finally established in 1918, with the official title of the Camouflage Corps of the National League for Women’s Service in New York. Louise Larned volunteered in May of 1918 and joined a group that was taught by artist H. Ledyard Towle. Joining at the same time was another woman artist, with strong connections to West Point, Rose Stokes.

After attending the camouflage camp, the women camoufleurs (who were sardonically nicknamed “camoufleuses” or “camoufloosies”) took on other projects, most of which used “dazzle” camouflage to attract larger crowds to recruiting and fund-raising events. Overnight, on July 11, 1918, for example, twenty-four of the women camouflage artists painted a multi-colored disruption scheme (using abstract, geometric shapes in black, white, pink, green, and blue) on the USS Recruit, a wooden recruiting station in Union Square in NYC, built to convincingly look like a ship. Louise Larned and Rose Stokes were members of that painting team.

In September 1918, both Larned and Stokes were assigned to the Navy’s Camouflage Section, where they probably made model ships (to which camouflage was applied for testing) or, as draftsmen, prepared large scale colored diagrams for use by artists at the docks in painting camouflage on the ships.

They had expected to remain on duty until the war’s official end. But the Treaty of Versailles was signed on June 28, 1919, and exactly one month later, newspapers announced that most of the eleven thousand women “yeomanettes” would be discharged early. But certain women were retained, with Larned and Stokes among them. More details were provided by the Pittsburgh Post:

“Among those who will remain are the artist girls who drew dazzle designs for merchant and battleships—those funny zig-zag stripes which made the Germans waste torpedoes and valuable shells on ships which appeared to be ‘going the wrong way.’ The artists today were working on submarine plans and they like the life.

“‘I do wish the newspapers would say we don’t want to leave the navy,’ said Louise Larned, one of the artistic yeomanettes. ‘We want to be part of the service.’

“And Rose Stokes, whose brothers are all West Pointers, wants to ‘be in the navy—not just a barnacle attached to it by civil service rules.’”

Two months later, a woman journalist named Edith Moriarty published an article in the Spokane Chronicle in which she said that, during the war, the government had discovered that women are just as good or better than men at drawing-related tasks, such as drafting charts and diagrams.

She continued: “Two young women who made good along that line are Miss Rose Stokes of New York and Miss Louise Larned, of West Point NY. These girls, who are both artists, enlisted in the navy as yeomen and they were in New York in the camouflage corps studying to go abroad when the armistice was signed. They have spent most of their time while in the service putting in details on specifications and charts for submarines. The girls are so satisfactory at their work that they have been retained by the navy although many of the yeomen have been relieved of further duty.”

It has so far proved a challenge to locate more specific facts about the life of Louise Larned Fasick. One additional finding is that she was the designer of what was known as the “Navy Girl Poster,” which was presumably used to recruit women to serve in the navy.

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Update (August 29, 2019) Sorry, haven't yet located an image file for Louise Larned's poster (there are well-known posters by that tag but they appear to have been the work of Howard Chandler Christy). However, we have located three paintings by Louise Larned and one by Rose Stokes. Of the four, three are government paintings of ships (two by Larned, one by Stokes), in public domain, and the fourth is a pastel cover painting for St. Nicholas Magazine (by Larned), dated 1929. They are reproduced below.

Above Louise Larned, Ocean-Going Tug Towing Target Shed (n.d.)

Above Louise Larned, Ship of the Nevada Class (n.d.)

Above Rose Stokes, South Dakota Class Battleship, Concept Drawing (n.d.) [at a cursory glance from a distance, it looks almost identical to the previous Larned painting]

Above Louise Larned, Cover painting for the September 1929 issue of St. Nicholas Magazine.

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Sources
Women Artists Asked For Camouflage Unit: Miss Anne F. Goldsmith Wants One Hundred To Train for Service in France. New York Tribune, October 24, 1917.

Camouflage the Recruit: Woman’s Service Corps Redecorate the Landship in Union Square. Washington Post, May 14, 1918.

Yeomen Rejoice; End of Jobs’ Scorn Is Sighted as Yeomanettes Leave Navy; Girls Establish Good Record. Pittsburgh Daily Post (Pittsburgh PA), July 28, 1919.

Edith Moriarty, With the Women of Today. Spokane Chronicle (Spokane WA), September 18, 1919.

Roy R. Behrens, ed., Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books, 2012.

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Earlier, I had posted a newspaper photograph of Louise Larned and Rose Stokes (NY Tribune, August 7, 1919) at work drafting plans for submarines. But the picture quality was so poor that I decided to remove it. Nevertheless, the caption for the photograph may still be of interest. It reads: These girls drew submarine plans for the US Navy instead of knitting socks during the war. They enlisted in the navy as yeomen and were in the camouflage corps in New York studying to go abroad when the armistice was signed. Both girls are artists and will be retained by the navy after yeomanettes are relieved. Miss Rose Stokes of New York City is commander of the Betsy Ross Chapter of the American Legion…

Note A somewhat different version of this post has also been provided to AskART.com.

The Color Revolution and Camouflage

Ad in Ladies Home Journal, October 1929

The Color Revolution
by Regina Lee Blaszczyk
The MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2012
368 pp., illus. 121 col. Trade: $34.95
ISBN: 9780262017770.

Reviewed by Roy R. Behrens

THE PHRASE in this book’s title initially appeared in print in a 1929 issue of Fortune magazine, a few months after the huge financial crash that launched the Great Depression. It announced that there was an ongoing “color revolution,” a widespread adoption of color in industrial products, resulting in “apricot autos, blue beds, and mauve mops.”

Ironically, this book also documents that, in another sense, this was not so much a “revolution” as an “evolution,” the stirrings of which can be traced to the early nineteenth century. It was massively encouraged by the Industrial Revolution, in the interior uses of color at the Crystal Palace Exhibition (the first World’s Fair in 1851), the invention of synthetic dyes, and chromolithographic prints and packaging.

It was also about “evolution” because in part it was empowered by the theories of Charles Darwin, whose much-debated writings about natural selection prompted an increase of interest in the survival function of colors and patterns in natural forms. Was conspicuous coloration a means by which to find a mate? At the same time, did subdued coloration contribute to concealment? One consequence of this exchange was the rise of modern theories about ”protective coloration” in nature, which in World War I acquired the name of “camouflage.” In turn, this led to chatter about “warning coloration,” such as zoologist Hugh B. Cott’s remark that the traffic commission “has adopted a system of coloration whose copyright belongs by priority to wasps and salamanders.”

A recurring theme throughout this book—which the author plays up from beginning to end—is that modern applications of color have developed hand in hand with advances in camouflage. Indeed, it is even contended that, at the end of WWI, it was former camouflage experts (both army and navy) who “applied their knowledge of visual deception to product design and created a new profession: the corporate colorist.” If a person has the wherewithal to conceal an object, he or she can also make that same object conspicuous, through reverse engineering. As this book points out repeatedly, the uses of color in product design were based on the inversion of camouflage techniques—in the words of American artist (and WWI camoufleur) H. Ledyard Towle, it was “reverse camouflage.” More>>>

US Women's Camouflage Corps

Above Photograph of members of the Women's Camouflage Corps applying disruptive (or dazzle) camouflage to an ambulance (c1918).

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The following text is by Bessie Rowland James [journalist and wife of Marquis James], as originally published in her book For God, For Country, For Home. New York: G.P. Putnam's Sons, 1920, pp. 164-166. It has also been reprinted in Roy R. Behrens, ed., SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook. Dysart IA: Bobolink Books, 2011, pp. 286-293.—

The Camouflage Corps was formed by a group of artists, writers, stenographers, school teachers, debutantes, many sorts of women. The Corps was not the idea [of the National League for Women's Service], but when there was the nucleus of an organization, the members asked to be put under its direction. After consulting government officials and learning that there was a real need of women camoufleurs, the League took steps to complete the organization.

Like the Motor Corps, the Camouflage Corps had its captain and lieutenants. The commander, a corporal, was Anne Furman Goldsmith, an artist. Courses were arranged under the direction of Lieutenant H. Ledyard Towle, an artist, who was at that time training the first camouflage section of the Seventy-First Regiment. Large numbers of English and French women, safe locations many miles behind the battleline, were employed in France to camouflage the big guns, wagons, trucks, to make observers'  suits, and other equipment as well as the miles of wire netting used upon the roads. It was a kind of work women could do. It required, however, much technical training.

The course given by the Camouflage Corps covered not only training in camouflage, but drilling, boxing, pistol and rifle shooting. The first Corps was formed in March [1918], and when the training was completed a second one was organized, this time under the direction of the United States Shipping Board.

Women ship camoufleurs in Washington DC (c1918) *

For the training of both Corps, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., permitted the women to utilize the old Billings Estate on the Hudson River for developing screens to match the rocks, water, and trees. Part of the estate was used as a revolver range. The camoufleurs spent much time in attempting to design an observer's suit which would harmonize with any scenery and make the wearer practically undiscernible at a distance of twenty feet.

The camouflage of the front of the suit matched the trees; the back shaded into the rocks' reversed, the front merged with the grass and the back with ice and snow. By such an arrangement the observer's suit could be used in a variety of landscapes; but the Camouflage Corps was not satisfied. It sought to design a suit useful in any terrain.

About a dozen graduates of the Corps were employed by the navy, some in Washington to work out different plans of camouflage and others in the yards at Philadelphia. Perhaps the most spectacular work of the Corps was the camouflage of the [USS] Recruit, the big land battleship built in Union Square, New York City. This was a night's work for the women and was done at the request of the navy to further recruiting. The camouflage design was worked out in the classrooms of the Corps. One day at sundown New Yorkers saw the ship a tame, neutral gray. The next morning it wore a wild, fantastic design of many colors.

Tanks, ambulances, and trucks were camouflage at the request of different branches of the Government to encourage recruiting, for wherever the camoufleurs went in their uniforms, spreading their bright paints, a crowd was sure to gather.

* The officer in the top photograph is Harold Van Buskirk, who was the executive officer in charge of the US Navy Camouflage Section during World War I.

Additional Information

Did Dazzle Camouflage Really Work?

Blodgett ship camouflage plans (redrawn)

WHILE LECTURING recently at the Sydney College of the Arts in Australia, I shared my digital reconstructions of a number of course deception plans for World War I ship camouflage (commonly known as dazzle camouflage). Five of those are shown above. The original study was conducted by Leo S. Blodgett, a Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering student at MIT, and the results were published in his Bachelor of Science degree thesis (1919).

This full document can be accessed here at the MIT library website. His hand-drawn colored diagrams of camouflaged ship models are somewhat imperfectly rendered, so I have redrawn them on computer. A more serious problem is that the color swatches (a key to the colors applied to the ship models) were apparently made with opaque watercolor (gouache), and some of the colors have dramatically changed with the passage of time. So the colors in my reconstructions may differ considerably from the originals. Also, as Blodgett mentions in his text, he restricted his experiments to those that made intentional use of perspective distortions or forced perspective (aka "false perspective").

Using a ship camouflage testing theatre that, at the end of the war, was given to MIT by Boston-area camouflage artists (he includes two photographs of it, reproduced below), he determined that average course estimation errors could sometimes be substantial. To date, this is the most persuasive proof that not only was dazzle camouflage effective in diverting the aim of the U-boats, it was far better than anyone thought.

Ship Camouflage Testing Theatre (c1919)

More recently, I found another document, titled Notes on Course Deception Principles. In public domain, it appears to be a US Government report [Contract NObe-72039. Task 3 (Final Report). Report No. 3-8. September 1959]. The study was conducted by MIT optical physiologist Seibert Quimby Duntley, whose emphasis on "false perspective" may suggest that he had some awareness of the research by Blodgett. Also, in the final paragraph, when he mentions automobile styling in relation to camouflage, he is probably alluding to the work of designers and color consultants at General Motors (notably H. Ledyard Towle, who was an army camoufleur during WWI). Here is the full text (there are no illustrations)—

PREFACE
These notes were originated in support of efforts to avoid course deception effects in the painting of aircraft. They constitute a brief discussion of some of the principles employed in the design of the course-deception patterns and type-deception patterns formerly incorporated in the painting of surface ships as a defense against submarine and surface ship attack directed by visual sightings. Although technical developments have eliminated these measures from naval practice, the concepts from which they were developed are not without present value. The notes are reported herein primarily because no comparable written material on this subject appears to be available.

INTRODUCTION
Several effective patterns for the painting of surface vessels were devised in World Wars I and II to decrease the probability that the true course and speed of the ship would be correctly estimated by an observer at sea level. It is the purpose of this report to discuss some of the principles upon which the design of these patterns was based.

BASIS OF COURSE ESTIMATION
Successful estimation of the course of a vessel involves a special mental process in the recognition category: When some object which might be a ship is visually perceived, the observer is required to search his memory and generate within his brain visualizations of known ship-types at various headings in order to compare these visualizations with the appearance of the object. When the correlation between the apparent object and one of these visualizations is sufficiently good the observer experiences a sense of recognition and course estimation. This mental process, usually subconscious and rapid, requires familiarity with the appearance of ships and, of course, improves with experience due to the accumulation of memory. If visualizations at more than one heading correlate closely with the appearance of the unknown object, course estimation is ambiguous; accuracy is possible only if there is a rapid rate of change of correlation between the appearance of the unknown object and a series of visualized ship headings. Any factor causing the appearance of the object to fail to correlate with visualizations based upon memory of known ships will inhibit or prevent recognition and course estimation. It is not surprising, therefore, that several types of course deception pattern techniques have been evolved. These can, however, be classified into two main groups, which might be termed confusion measures and falsification measures, respectively, for lack of more standardized terminology. These two categories will be discussed separately in the following sections.

CONFUSION MEASURES
As previously stated, any factor causing the appearance of an unknown object to fail to correlate with visualizations based upon memory of known ships will inhibit or prevent course estimation. Two classical methods for achieving confusion by means of paint have been called dazzle and low visibility, respectively.

The weird and garish dazzle designs so common on ships plying the North Atlantic during World War I have long disappeared from the seas, but pictures of them are easily available and universally excite curiously concerning the origins, the functions, and the basis for their design. All dazzle patterns sought to give the ship an unrecognizable appearance from a "periscope viewpoint." Almost any large discordant pattern departing markedly from all natural lines of a ship can accomplish this confusion objective. Each of the artists who conducted dazzle studies at model scale evolved favorite pattern-types, all of which served to produce course deception by confusion. The best of the dazzle patterns, however, sought to incorporate false perspective as a further course deception feature; perspective distortion as an independent course deception measure will be discussed in a later section.

Low visibility painting schemes for ships are still in use and are intended primarily to reduce the probability of the presence of the ship being visually detected. This is usually accomplished to some useful degree, but every low visibility treatment is a compromise and approaches true concealment within only a very narrow gamut of lighting and viewing conditions. At other times, portions of the vessel may be difficult or impossible to see, but other parts are readily visible. When this situation prevails, recognition of the ship may be impossible and its course may be difficult to estimate. The low visibility paint is then serving to provide course deception by confusion.

FALSIFICATION MEASURES
Since any factor causing the appearance of an unknown object to fail to correlate with the correct visualization of the ship being observed may lead to an erroneous course prediction, falsification of several kinds were employed in ship camouflage. Included in this category of course deception measures are disguise, false cues, false perspective, and symbolic patterns. Many ingenious falsification measures have been devised, but this report will mention only a few examples.

Disguise took many forms and was more commonly employed for reasons of type deception than course deception. False superstructure was added, for example, to tankers to make them resemble freighters, transports, or even warships, and in so doing reverse bow and stern in order to add an element of course deception.

False Cues included such devices as a bow wave painted at the stern of the ship, or a pint pattrn on or near the stack of a vessel intended to make the stack appear to learn toward the bow rather than the stern.

False Perspective was not confined to dazzle patterns. False superstructures and false water lines were employed to produce an untrue illusion of distance and to produce errors in stadiometric ranging through a periscope. False water lines tilted slight from bow to stern gave to the ship the illusion of a false heading. An analogous effect was sometimes achieved by the use of non-parallel bands of paint on the sides of vessels having multiple decks, thus inducing a false convergence relation.

Symbolic Patterns saw relatively little use in naval camouflage but they are extensively used as a type of "falsification measure" in many forms of art and design. A recent example is found in the current styling used by a certain automobile manufacturer, who says that his cars appear to be in motion even when standing still. This is achieved by an overall wedge-shaped motif high at the rear and tapering to a low point in front, suggestion of the configuration of recent high speed aircraft or of an arrow point. Arrows or chevron markings are often used to indicate direction.

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