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.

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

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.

French Women Employed Making Camouflage Nets

MAKING CAMOUFLAGE SCREENS. French Women are Employed in Making Nets for Disguising Gun Positions, in The Watchman and Southron (Sumter SC). October 16, 1918—

Behind American lines somewhere in France. Seven hundred French women are employed in the American Camouflage station here making nets to screen from observation American batteries and machine gun sections. There was a burst of patriotic song as the Associated Press correspondent entered the large building where they work, for many of them sing as they sew.

The screening of artillery is the most imporant work of camouflage, as it is the main reliance in deceiving the aerial observer and camera and in preventing the enemy from locating our batteries.

For this purpose huge camouflage nets are provided of wire and fish-net, which cover the guns like a great horizontal tent. In the netting are tied bunches of green burlap, of the same color as the surrounding grass or foliage. And thus viewed from above, the overhanging green net merges the battery into the landscape of trees and turf.

Hundreds of these nets were being made by the women workers. The 75 millimeter takes an overhanging net, 30 feet square, the 165 millimeter gun has a 37 foot net, and the American machine gun gets an 18 foot net. The nets are graded inten colors of green and earth-brown, so that the shield may have the exact tint of the surrounding trees. The nets are shipped to the front in huge bundles, one for each gun.

It has been a problem to get the 700 women required for this deft work on the nets, and one of the chief means of drawing them is a Red Cross home for the babies of the married women, and a YMCA kitchen which gives them a good meal for 60 centimes (12 cents). Camouflage garlands are also made by the women. These garlands of green burlap are strung between the trees, in order to break up lines and diffuse edges so that the location of a convoy or battery will not show on an aerial photograph.

In the carpenter shop huge frames for green umbrellas were being made. The umbrellas open like an ordinary sun-shade, and camouflage a machine gun. In the blacksmith shop the men were turning out steel "cabins" which are sunk below the ground, for an observer. They have a front of bulletproof steel and are about as strong as a small safe. In one of these an observer is safe in the midst of a shower of shrapnel.

Laying on paint much as a scrub-woman wields a mop, an artist was walking about on a gigantic camouflage screen for an airplane hangar. The great piece of painting was spread on a field and covered an area of 1000 square yards. The artist was using a brush as big as a broom.

“Camouflage is making a constant battle against the aerial camera,” said the escort, "for with photographs made from airplanes the enemy gets a complete view of our positions unless they are obscured by some device of camouflage.” 

RELATED LINKS

Film of scene described above

The role of American women in WWI camouflage

Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of  WWI Ship Camouflage

Clara Lathrop Strong / New England Camouflage Artist

Above Portrait drawing of British author Aldous Huxley  by Eric Pape, teacher of Clara Lathrop Strong, as published in The Sphere, October 12, 1929. Public domain.

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On October 3, 1917, a brief article appeared in The Boston Transcript. The headline read CAMOUFLAGE BY WOMEN: Here Is a Chance for Wily Females to Show the Boches Some New Art Tricks. The full text read as follows—

A project has been launched to organize women artists who may desire instruction in the work ot camouflage, Land has been offered for a camp, and the scheme has the unofficial approval ot the War Department, which is, however, at the present time, unable to spare any men from the first camouflage unlt as instructors. If and when they become avallable, further detalls as to time and place and equipment, etc., will be given out. It is believed that many women artists will embrace the opportunity to use thelr special training in patriotic service of this sort. It is probable that the women would be used only in this country, nevertheless the exigencies of war cannot be foreseen, and preparation along this line is thought to be desirable. We are informed that “there is no age limit,” but applicants should be strong and active, and should have had training in landscape, mural or scenic palnting, or in sculpture. All those interested are requested to send thelr names and addresees to Mrs. Clara Strong, Marshfield Hllls, Mass.

Mrs. Clara [née Lathrop] Strong (1883-1955) was a painter, muralist, illustrator, sculptor, and writer. Born in Cambridge MA, she studied in California at Stanford University, and subsequently at Oberlin College in Ohio. After returning to Massachusetts, she studied art in Boston at the Eric Pape School of Art, and in New York with muralist Edwin Blashfield*. She opened her own studio in 1908. A year later, she married a Boston Back Bay surgeon named Seth L. Strong, who had also attended Oberlin, and earned his medical degree at Harvard University in 1913. During the first twelve years of their marriage, they became parents of four children.

In late 1917, a lengthy article appeared in the Chicago Examiner (December 2, p. 29), titled Camouflage the Art of Faking, Throwing Fritz Off the Trail. One of the illustrations was a photograph of Clara Strong, working in her studio. The caption reads: Mrs. C.L. Strong, Who Heads a School for Camouflage. In the closing paragraph, the article states:

Mrs. Clara Lothrop [sic] Strong, of Marshfield Hills, Mass., a well-known New England artist, has formed a school for painting camouflage.

Two other articles claim that Mrs. Strong “was the honorary head of the women’s camouflage war workers during the war” (Boston Traveler, July 13, 1921), and that “She became nationally famous as the originator of the camouflage camp, and in the World War was an instructor in the art of wartime camouflage” (Boston Herald, February 16, 1923).

Her participation in the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps during WWI is confirmed by an article in the New York Times (July 12, 1918), titled CAMOUFLAGE THE RECRUIT: Women’s Service Corps Redecorate the Landship in Union Square. She was one of twenty-four women who participated in that project.

The time frame is confusing, but the same 1921 article in the Boston Traveler states that Clara Lathrop Strong, her husband and their children lived in Bangkok, Thailand, during 1918. During that assignment, her husband was in charge of the Royal Medical College there. It provided Clara Strong with the opportunity to become acquainted with the traditional art of that country. In an issue of the Boston Advertiser (February 19, 1922), she is said to have made sculptures that were derivative of certain ceremonial dances, and to have been allowed to paint inside the Royal Palace, “where no foreigner and especially no woman, had previously been permitted.”

However, during this same time period, there are other news articles that indicate that the marriage of Seth and Clara Strong was disentegrating. On the front page of a 1922 issue of the Boston American (November 15), there was a portrait photograph of Clara Lathrop Strong for an article with the headline: SCULPTRESS ACCUSED BY HER HUSBAND: WIFE TRIED TO KILL HIM SAYS DOCTOR. The husband claimed that, as early as 1919, when he refused his wife’s request that the family move to New York, she assaulted him, and threatened to harm their youngest child. He also claimed that she had attempted to kill him by turning on the gas jets in his Boston office. All of which Clara Lathrop Strong denied.

The husband filed for divorce and petitioned for custody of their children. “I loved my husband dearly,” she said, “until he brought this suit against me.” She countersued for custody, and when the marriage was terminated, she was granted “separate support and custody of her four children.” All this was headlined in the press, which must have been unbearable for everyone involved.

As if that were not tragic enough, another incident took place in 1934, coincident with the Great Depression. This apparently had to do with the Emergency Relief Administration (ERA), a government assistance agency that provided assistance to artists. In an article in The Boston Herald (November 21), Clara Strong is quoted as describing herself as “nearly destitute.” 

She had applied for a painting commission but was rejected on the grounds that “relief officials told her that she seemed to have sufficient means to live on.” In anonymous protest, she entered a mural in an annual exhibition—using a pseudonym—in which she satirized “the ERA and ‘sacred cows’ who have been given ERA commissions.” When the artwork was rejected, she protested. Living “modestly” in a temporary residence, she said that “she has had to take her son out of college and has sold her antique furniture as proof of her qualifications for help from the state and government.”

That’s the extent of our findings so far. A distressingly complex story, and no doubt unexplained in many regards.

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*It’s interesting that in 1917, when the US entered WWI, a group of East Coast artists, headed by Barry Faulkner and Sherry E. Fry, formed a civilian organization called the American Camouflage Corps. It anticipated the wartime need for skilled artists to serve as army camoufleurs. The chairman of the group was Clara Strong’s teacher, muralist Edwin Blashfield.

RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work? /  Nature, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage /  Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage / Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage /  Optical science meets visual art /  Disruption versus dazzle / Chicanery and conspicuousness /  Under the big top at Sims' circus

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.

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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.

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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.

To Take Off Weight—Use Camouflage

G.L. Stampa, Punch (1919)

Above Cartoon by G.L. Stampa in Punch magazine, July 2, 1919, p. 26. The caption reads: She: "What a wonderful costume Mr. Bulkley has." He: "Yes. He's rather sensitive about his outline. It's the camouflage idea to prevent being noticed." Other cartoons (from the same time period) about the camouflage of fat are featured below on this blog post.

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Betty Keep, DRESS SENSE (advice column) in The Australian Women's Weekly, September 30, 1970, p. 45—

[Question] I am short, just five feet, and overweight. My problem is a short waist and it's thick. Is there any fashion I can wear to make me look better? I do like to follow current fashion.

[Answer] Don't draw attention to your waist; I know this is difficult when nearly every fashion is now belted. The best camouflage I know is to accent the waist either slightly above or below your normal waist level.

Alfred J. Frueh (details), New York World (July 20, 1915)

Ida C. Clarke [author of American Women and the World War] in LOVELY WOMAN: Viewed by Herself, A Witty Address, in The Mail (Adelaide, South Australia), January 9, 1926, p. 22—

Not long ago I saw in a paper a long, nice, lovely story, stating that the War Department says now we can tell all about camouflage. Here was this nice, lovely story telling nice things about how the two systems of camouflage happened to be invented by man—the low visibility system and the dazzle system. And I said to myself, here is a man imagining that he invented camouflage, when, after all, for centuries, ever since time began, women have been practicing that gentle art of camouflage.

There isn't a fat woman under the sun that doesn't know the advantages of the low visibility system of camouflage. Fat women know they must not wear stripes that go round, and, of course, the dazzle system is in very general use. So men did not invent camouflage. What man did was to take women's invention and apply it to the most destructive business that man has ever invented—war.

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Anon, NEW BOON FOR PLUMP: Fat Legs Made to Look Thin, in The Mail (Adelaide, South Australia), December 19, 1931, p. 22—

Women need no longer feel sensitive and embarrassed if they are the unfortunate possessors of fat legs.

Combining compassion with commercial initiative, the stocking manufacturers of France have gone to the rescue of these women and have hit on the great idea of evolving a camouflage system to disguise unsightly ankles.

Now they have extended this system to the whole leg, and are making specially shaded stockings to disguise fat legs.

These stockings shaded gradually from dark yellow or blue at the back to light yellow or light blue at the front, have the effect of making thick legs look slim.

Artist's name unclear, Life magazine (1918)

Women Camouflage Artists Coming to Sioux City

Exhibition Banner © Roy R. Behrens 2017

SIOUX CITY, Iowa – HIDDEN FIGURES: The Untold Story of Women’s Role in Camouflage, an exhibition curated by Roy R. Behrens, will open at noon, on Sunday, Nov. 11, 2017 at the Betty Strong Encounter Center. Admission will be free.

The exhibition comprises 40 US government photographs of American women engaged in camouflage activities during World War I. Captions and text panels offer rich context for women’s contribution to camouflage development after the United States entered the war in 1917. It will serve as a featured attraction during the Center’s 2018 school tour season. The exhibition will run through Memorial Day, June 3, 2018.

The story begins with US Navy women stationed in the continental United States, France, Guam and Hawaii during WWI who were formally known as “Yeomen (F).” Informally, they were called “Yeomanettes” or “Yeowomen,” according to Behrens, Professor of Art/Graphic Design and Distinguished Scholar at University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls.

“They served primarily as clerical staff, but also as radio operators, electricians, draftsmen, pharmacists, photographers, telegraphers, fingerprint experts, chemists, torpedo assemblers and camouflage artists,” says Behrens who has published books and articles on art and camouflage since the 1970s.

The US Naval Reserve Act of 1916 opened the door for women to enlist in the Navy during WWI when the demand for military personnel exceeded the number of available American men.

“This decision enabled the enlistment of the first female sailors in the US Naval Reserve, among them a small number of African-American women, the first to be allowed to serve in any of the American armed forces,” says Behrens.
       
The exhibition’s images were drawn from Library of Congress collections (LOC Prints and Photographs) and the National Archives and Research Administration (NARA).

Behrens’ exhibition images are enlarged, high-resolution laser prints, digitally modified to remove dust and scratches and adjust exposure flaws.

Among Behrens’ recently published books are: SHIP SHAPE: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook (2011); and FRANK LLOYD WRIGHT AND MASON CITY: Architectural Heart of the Prairie (2016).
     
Behrens often has appeared in interviews on radio; television; in educational films, including NOVA on PBS; and in the recently broadcast Australian documentary, DECEPTION BY DESIGN: The Hidden Story of Camouflage (2015).

Behrens’ blog (www.camoupedia.blogspot.com) on camouflage has been called “the most important online resource for anyone interested in the subject.”

Article from Boston Sunday Post, August 4, 1918

Camouflage Artist | Genevieve Cowles

Poster © Roy R. Behrens (2017)

Anon, TO TELL OF CAMOUFLAGE OF AMERICAN VESSELS: Miss Genevieve Cowles Will Speak at YWCA Tomorrow Night at 8:15 in The Times Dispatch (Richmond VA), February 11, 1919, p. 3—

Miss Genevieve Cowles of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps of the National League for Women’s Service will speak at the YWCA tomorrow night at 8:15 on “Marine Camouflage, the Art That Saved the Ship.” Miss Cowles was trained under William Andrew Mackay, head camoufleur of the United States Shipping Board, and has proved a capable worker. She was pledged to secrecy during the duration of the war.

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Anon, NEW YORK ARTIST TO DESCRIBE CAMOUFLAGE in Hartford Courant (Hartford CT). March 7, 1919, p. 10—

The annual art lecture to be given at the Congregational Church Monday evening at 8 o’clock, by the Currents Events Club, will be free to the public. Miss Genevieve Cowles, a well-known artist of New York, will speak on “Army and Navy Camouflage.” Miss Cowles is a mumber of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps under the National League for Women’s Service in New York, and has recently returned from France.

•••

Cartoon caption [signed ERH], A FREE TIP FOR THE ARMY: WHY NOT TRY WOMEN CAMOUFLEURS? in The Ogden Standard (Ogden UT), December 3, 1917, p. 11—

Why don’t some of the armies hire women as camoufleurs, anyhow? They’ve been doing it all their lives. Think of the rouge, the switches and the powder puff. Then ponder over the pads and braces.

Why, as we gather it, half the art of being an up-to-date young woman is camouflage.

Of course there are men, too, like John D. [Rockefeller] who wear wigs; and other brothers who disguise themselves (absent method) as sick patients to help the fourth man in the game to get out for the evening.

Old stuff, this camouflaging.

Camoufleuse | The Dazzling of Women at War

Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps painting the USS Recruit (1918)

An important contribution on the social significance of World War I-era camouflage (including its broader relationships to Modern-era literature, visual arts, fashion and gender stereotypes) has recently been published in the journal Modernism/Modernity. Volume 4 Cycle 2. August 2019. Written by Emily James, who is on the faculty at St Thomas University in St Paul MN, the title of the article is "Camoufleuse: The Dazzling of Women at War." Exhaustively researched and stirringly constructed, it is undoubtedly one of the finest essays on the subject. Below is the opening paragraph, ending with an online link to the entire paper—

Modernism and camouflage would seem to be unlikely allies. One advances and the other retreats. One rebels and resists; the other lurks undercover. But during World War I, a group of renegade camoufleurs forged an uneasy truce between modernism's flash and camouflage's muted secrets. Their sources were extraordinary and eclectic. Drawing inspiration from animal behavior, avant-garde design, and women's fashion, the camoufleur—and, as I argue, the camoufleuse—worked to reimagine visibility and warfare in modern terms.…More>>> 

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It may be also be of interest that there is now a Wikipedia article on the role of women in WWI camouflage, called "Women's Reserve Camouflage Corps." Also, the full text of our related essay on Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of World War I Ship Camouflage can also be accessed online.

using a periscope to view camouflage-painted models

The US Secretary of the Navy during World War I was Josephus Daniels (1862-1948), a prominent North Carolina newspaper editor. He was appointed by President Woodrow Wilson, while Franklin D. Roosevelt served as Assistant Secretary of the Navy.

There are various photographs of Daniels in connection with his wartime duties, both army and navy. In the government photo above, for example, he is shown while on a visit to the US Navy’s Camouflage Section in Washington DC. He is peering through a submarine periscope (positioned upsidedown) to view dazzle-painted wooden ship models (like those on shelves behind him) that had been set up for testing in an adjoining room. 

In a second (poor quality) news photograph (above), he is in the same facility, probably on the same day, where (according to the caption) he is examining the model for the USS George Washington (as published in UNCLE SAM HAS CAMOUFLAGE FOR SHIPS IN PEACE in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York), on April 27, 1919, p. 9). According to Everett Warner (who oversaw the artists who designed ship camouflage) this was one of the largest ship models, measuring twenty-two and a half inches in length.

There is a surviving photograph of the camouflaged model for the same ship (below), but it shows only the opposite side (the port side), while the starboard side is visible in the photograph of Secretary Daniels.

It is of additional interest to note that this camouflage scheme was apparently never applied to the USS George Washington. According to an article by Robert Skerret (1919), at the close of the war, when that same vessel was selected to transport President Wilson to Europe, the ship and its fleet of escorts were not dazzle-painted, but instead were covered in “Omega Gray,” a monotone developed not by US Navy camoufleurs but by the Submarine Defense Association. 

[OOPS I seem to have made a mistake. I forgot that in an earlier post, I published photographs of the USS George Washington painted in this same dazzle camouflage scheme, and quoted from texts that described it. It appears to have been repainted at a later date in monotone gray.]

In a third photograph (below), Daniels is shown out of doors, presumably in an army training field, talking to an infantryman who is camouflaged to blend in with the surrounding foliage.

Daniels is commonly credited with being a supporter of women’s suffrage. And, while serving as Secretary of the Navy, it was he who first enabled women to be employed by and serve in the US Navy.

There is more information about his support of women's service in a news article in the Poughkeepsie Eagle News (LIFE HAD ITS PROBLEMS FOR SAILOR GIRLS OF 1917), on September 29, 1942—

"Is there any law that says a yeoman must be a man?" Secretary Daniels asked his legal advisors. The answer was no but only men had been enlisted up to then. The law did not say "male."

"Then enroll women in the Naval Reserve as Yeomen," Secretary Daniels said, "and we will have the best clerical assistance the country can provide."

The Navy got a total of 11,000 yeomen (F) by calling women to the Naval Reserve, mostly to take care of clerical work at the Navy Department in Washington. Some Yeomen (F) were translators, some were draughtsmen, fingerprinters, camouflage designers [assigned to the Camouflage Section], recruiting agents, or workers in the Bureau of Medicine and Surgery or in Naval Intelligence."

According to Aryeh Wetherhorn in The Easter Egg Fleet (2020), among the American women who held camouflage-related positions in the Office of Naval Intelligence (ONI) were Sara Elizabeth Carles [sister of artist Arthur Beecher Carles, who also worked as a ship camoufleur], Ruth Prentice Thompson, Lilian A. Jones, Jean Knox, Sara Scott, and Florence Dorothea Fischer.

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That given, there are deeply troubling aspects of Daniels’ actions and beliefs. He has been described as a “vehement white supremicist and segregationist,” and a supporter of the Ku Klux Klan. It is especially disturbing to read about his connection with the Wilmington Massacre of 1898, in Wilmington NC.

women's contributions to wartime camouflage / WWI

It is difficult to know to what extent American women contributed directly to the design of wartime camouflage. A case in point is the artist Constance Cochrane (1888-1952), whose father and grandfather were career military officers. As a painter, she had a lifelong interest in seascapes and coastal views. In one source it is said that “she joined the navy during both the first and second World Wars to design camouflage for ships.” Another claims that “during World War I she, like Frederick Waugh [a prominent seascape artist], designed camouflage for navy battleships.” A graduate of the Philadelphia School of Design for Women (Moore College of Art), she was associated with an alliance of women artists known as The Ten or The Philadelphia Ten. During WWI, she was a member of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps, whose activities we’ve discussed at length in earlier posts and in an online video talk.

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 Rights and Wedlocked Camouflage

The years prior to World War I, the war itself, and afterwards, were volatile to say the least. The Armory Show. Women's Suffrage. The most disgusting level of racism. Prohibition, and so on. What do any of these have to do with camouflage? Everything, as all these issues were entwined. Above, for example, is a newspaper cartoon (haven't located the artist's name) that was published in the Boston Globe on May 11, 1918. It's a rare, insightful comment about a certain camouflage technique. At the same time, it is also offensive to women, and plays up the pervasive subject of strife within marriage ("wedlock"). In August of the year before, an equally clever but even more virulent column appeared (as reprinted below) about the meaning of "camouflage" in relation to women's behavior toward men. Who wrote the column? In this case, we know the author's name. It was Arthur (Bugs) Baer, a prominent American humorist (it was he who referred to Babe Ruth as the "Sultan of Swat") who wrote in a style that reminds us of free association, automatic writing, with even a hint of connection to the experimental writings of Gertrude Stein.

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 Arthur (“Bugs”) Baer, CAMOUFLAGE. Evening World (New York). August 18, 1917, p. 3—

THIS WAR is being fought on words that ain’t in the dictionary. Old man Noah Webster knew a few spoonfuls, but he didn’t know anymore about camouflage than a hog does about Sunday. You can lamp his dictionary until you sprain an eye, but you won’t apprehend anything about camouflage in his unabridged word garage. Camouflage is a bilking industry with the libretto and music written by the French. The theory is to swindle the German’s eyes. The Frenchmen cover ‘emselves with a lot of leaves. They got the theory from Adam and Eve, but ain’t paying royalities.

After he is camouflaged up in a set of form fitting leaves, the Frenchman ankles off for a short vegetarian stroll toward the Kasier’s trenches. Some husky Boche tosses his optic toward him, but figures him out for a rhododendren bush rehearsing for a tableau vivant. First thing he knows, the rhododendron bush goes Democratic and poor old Hans is listed among the slightly killed, totally wounded or partially missing.

THE IDEA of camouflage is to gyp the enemy. Give him one five for two tens. You heard about the cowboy who called on his best girl and found her bivouacking in another cowboy’s lap. He pulled out his .45 calibre revolver to shoot the beauty spot off her false, deceiving chin, when she looks at him like page 254 of Ouida’s novels.
  
“Do you believe your dearie, or do you believe your eyes?” she piped.
 
The poor fish believed his dearie, and they got married and lived snappily ever after. She had that fool cowboy all camouflaged up with her metropolitan tongue and city ways.
 
Still, camouflage is no novelty among the unfair sex. A flapper will high heel along the macadamized turf, all ambushed up in a swarm of Djer Kiss [the flying kisses of fairies]. She will have a gang of summer furs lurking on her shoulders and a mob of paint, powder and other beauty utensils loitering on her face. She will have a complexion fairer than a Supreme Court decision. But when she gets home and starts to uncamouflage, she puts on ten years for everything she takes off. She has one of those removable complexions. By the time that she has moulted her blonde hair, shed her automatic teeth and discarded her mechanical eye, she is older than hieroglyphics, and gains every lap.
 
She has one of those folding complexions that you can carry in your handbag. The French have no monopoly on that camouflage institution. Yea bo.

UNDER THE modern regime of beauty camouflage, everything about a woman complexion is detachable except her ears.
  
There are different branches of study in the camouflage curriculum. In Washington, the Senators have oratorical camouflage down to a science. Their speciality is painting word pictures, using their chin as a brush. There isn’t a battle that the Senate can’t win with a few maxillary calisthenics. Rhetorical camouflage is great stuff, but you can’t bridge the ocean with a pontoon of words. Any union Senator with his vocal camouflagers on can build a fleet in three paragraphs or raise an army with a few chin excursions. Aesop’s jackass had the camouflage idea when he attended the zoo bal masque wearing the lion’s coat and vest, but a few chirps of his fool mule tongue gummed his camouflage.
  
The gent who disguises himself behind a camouflage of women’s skirts in order to escape military service is smaller than the Republican vote in Alabama. A guy that little can ambush himself behind a cancelled postage stamp. The slackers are utilizing a camouflage of women’s skirts, dependent relatives, conscientious objections, flat feet, weak heart and weaker knees. Which is a camouflage that fails to camouflage by quite a few flages. And a culprit who tries to hide behind a woman’s petticoats would have to pass his career in a bureau drawer. That’s where the ladies are wearing their pettiskirts. Nope, we ain’t married, but we read The Delineator [a women’s magazine at the time].

THE PARAMOUNT idea of camouflage is to create an aura of low visibility which will enable you to ramble around in safety. The chameleon has the right idea, and one that might be elaborated. For instance, a bill collector would never find you if you were camouflaged as a waste basket. All the props you need for this ambush is a loose wicker basket and a hat made of old newspapers, vacant letters and unraveled souvenir postcards. You can circumvent the heat by camouflaging yourself as a mint julep. With enough practice you can become a perfect julep. Even your wife will be unable to detect the difference on your breath.
  
By camouflaging yourself as a porcupine with a flat wheel, you can secure enough elbow space in the subway to draw in a breath edgeways once in a while. Bat as drawing in a subway breath is suicide at a nickel a ticket, this camouflage is rather intricate.
  
Peace hath her camouflages as well as war. With a lttle cranial dexterity and a few cerebral gymnastics, camouflaging can be utilized to alleviate the inconvenience of civilization.
  
There will be a camouflage for every ill.
  
Of course, in the case of the poor henpecked husband, we can paint no disguise with a brush.
  
The only camouflage will be distance. And you will have to paint that with your heels.

Below (updated 24Mar2019): Moments ago while browsing the "free photo website" of Gratisography, we ran across this photograph by Ryan McGuire which, by fortunate coincidence, uses much the same trickery as the "wedlocked" cartoon from 1918.

Photo by Ryan McGuire