landscape camouflage as flat pattern abstract design

Above Collier’s: The National Weekly. January 10, 1914. Artist unknown. This cover design and illustration do not pertain directly to Louis B. Siegriest or military camouflage. But the jacket the person is wearing, with its “flat pattern” abstract design, seems entirely consistent.

•••

Louis Siegriest in Louis Bassi Siegriest Reminiscences: Oral History Transcript. Interview conducted by V.L. Gilb. California: Bancroft Library, 1954—

 [At the time that the US entered World War II in 1941]…I knew a man [in San Francisco] who had been in the First World War as a camoufleur. He called me up and asked me if I would like to come down and join the camouflage outfit. So I thought that would be a thing I would want to do, and I went down and joined the camouflage outfit.

…This was with the US Engineers [Army Corps of Engineers]. That was I think the third day after the war [was declared]…

…they were looking for camoufleurs at that time, and they were very hard to get because very few people had experience, which I myself didn’t have, but this man, he was in the First World War [in France], and he was with [Homer] St. Gaudens and Abe Rattner, the painter.

…So he sort of took charge of the training of the men to be camoufleurs because the men who were head[ing] the department knew nothing of it. They had to read all this time while this fellow took over and trained us to do this type of work.

…His name was Stanley Long [1892-1972]. He is an artist, himself. He has a show at the present time [1954] at the Maxwell Gallery of cowboys and horses. He’s pretty good at it, too, Western type of painting…

…I stayed with them [the camouflage unit] until practically the end of the war…

[Question: How did your work at a WWII camoufleur contribute to your eventual work as an abstract painter?]

…Well, all this time we were working on the drawings of camouflage installations, [and] it had to be worked out in flat pattern. And they all worked into sort of abstract patterns, and that sort of interested me because I had never worked that way. But I had a feeling all the time that that was something I would like to do. So it sort of changed my painting, after working in this camouflage work. I saw things with a different view than I had before. And I still don’t paint as an abstract [artist], but I use an abstract pattern as a base in practically everything I do. I mean I start that way, in more or less flat pattern. And then I work my realistic [components] into the pattern. I found that it works out better than the way I used to work, just straight painting and trying to pull it all together. This way I start out with a pattern, and I worked into it that way.

•••

In a later interview, conducted in 1978 for the Archives of American Art by Terry St. John and Paul Karlstrom, Siegriest gave a slightly different account of the same experiences:

Question: …Some time in 1941 you went to work for the United States Army Corps of Engineers. What did you do for them?



 LS: I went into camouflage at that time. There was that cowboy artist by the name of Danny Long [sic, Stanley Long], whom I knew.  He was a friend of [Maurice] Logan’s. I met him over in San Francisco on the second day of the war, I think. He said they had just called him back. He did camouflage during the First World War, and he said they called him back to teach the younger fellows camouflage. He said, “Why don’t you join up?” I said I would love to. It took me a couple of days to go through the process, but I finally went in and it was easy for me. You were assigned to a job and you made these designs and then they were handed out to different companies to do the work.

Q: Now you did a design like a flat abstract pattern. Would it be an aerial view?



LS: An aerial view.  

Q: And then your design would be sent out to...

LS: Different companies. They would do the painting, nets or whatever. 

Q: What was it like over at Fort Cronkite and around there? Didn’t they use different colored plants and things like that to create patterns?

LS: Yes, but I did the Benicia thing up there, Benicia arsenals. That was designed mostly in there and I wouldn’t have a great deal to do. I’d look at how it looked and then I would fly it. 

Q: They’d put you in an airplane?



LS: Yes, I’d go to Hamilton Field, get a plane and go up there. At 6,000 feet I’d look at it. 

Q: How did it look?



LS: It was okay, sometimes I’d change the design.

Q: What did it look like at 10,000 feet?

LS: It looked like an abstract design. The way I did it was to go up there first and see what the land looked like on the outside. Then I’d bring the land in to the buildings; if there was a green patch over there I’d bring the green patch into the buildings. If there was brown, or dark, I’d bring it all in. So I’d go up and look down and see if that was right. And then there were other ways of doing it. I went up to Klamath, which was a radar station, and bought an old barn and moved it down (the barn) over the top of the radar station. We were on the coast.

Q: How did it look?

LS: Oh, it looked like a ranch, I’d build fences all around.  

Q: What was your experience as an artist?… Did this turn you on to any ideas for your later paintings?



LS: Well, more or less, I guess it did. At that time I painted. I even took my paints along.

Q: What kind of paintings did you do?

LS: I’d do things along the coast, you know.

Q: More straightforward kind of landscapes?

LS: More straightforward landscapes.

Q: Previously when you were doing landscapes you were looking straight ahead at them, and that’s a very abstract way of looking at landscape, like looking down.

LS: I even painted some of the installations.  I got into a lot of trouble by doing it because the Army thought I was giving secrets away. They took all the paintings from me and locked them up. I got them back. Well, that was good, working for the camouflage. And then, during that time, Life and Time had war artists.…

Postscript It may also be of interest that Louis Siegriest's second wife, artist Edna Stoddart (1888-1966), née Edna Lehnhardt, was the niece of Josephine Earp, the common-law wife of Wyatt Earp.

a claim about the origin of WWI US ship camouflage

Lake Pachuta duing WWI

Above Photograph of USS Lake Pachuta of Saginaw from an advertisement for Saginaw Shipbuilding Co. in International Marine Engineering (June 1919), p. 95—
•••

Until recently, I had never heard the name of Michael V. Dailey. While searching for leads in my research of the involvement of artists and others in the design of camouflage, I came across an article on a person with that name.

He was born in Massachusetts in 1872, and died at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Jamaica Plain, in Boston, February 2, 1959. He was a veteran of the Spanish-American War, but he evidently played some role in World War I. The article headline makes the claim that M.V. DAILEY DEVISED CAMOUFLAGE OF SHIPS DURING WORLD WAR I (The Boston Globe, February 3, 1959). Really? How interesting, since I have never run across his name in more than fifty years of researching the subject, during which my focus has frequently been on WWI ship camouflage.

But the article goes further. At two locations in the text, it appears to claim that not only did Mr. Dailey contribute to ship camouflage, it states that he was the “originator of ship camouflage during World War I.” A few lines later, more details are provided, as follow—

He was a special aide to the Secretary of War [which presumably refers to Newton Baker] in World War I when he received a special citation for his camouflage origination.

And so, I don’t know what to think. Is this true? Why haven’t I heard about it before? One has to wonder if there’s been some odd misunderstanding, inadvertent or otherwise. I suspect this sometimes happens, as when stories about one’s family’s past are repeated but not verified.

dazzle camouflage meets John Cage's chess pieces

Below is an excerpt from “Composing Chess,” an essay by Paul Franklin and Lowell Cross, as published in Larry List, ed., The Imagery of Chess Revisited. New York: George Braziller, 2005. The book’s cover is reproduced above. 

The passage refers to a musical composition (embedded within a painting) by American composer John Cage titled Chess Pieces (1944). It suggests a possible link between the chessboard pattern of Cage’s painting and geometric (sometimes checkerboard) color schemes used for so-called dazzle patterns used in World War I and II ship camouflage. If there was in fact a link, the writers surmise, the younger Cage may have learned about "high difference" camouflage from his father, an inventor named John Milton Cage, Sr. The extent to which wartime camouflage was “Cubist-inspired” (a common claim) has long been debated.

•••

Even though neither the structure nor the mechanics of Cage’s score refer specifically to chess, in choosing Chess Pieces as his title, the composer punningly associated its twenty-two movements (pieces) with the pieces of the game. The visual prominence of the notes in the painting also suggests a correlation between the shorthand language of musical notation and that of chess notation. The sixty-four-square chessboard format of the artwork reiterates these ideas. Sixty-four became sacrosanct for Cage in the early 1950s, when he embraced chance operations derived from the sixty-four symbolic hexagrams found in the ancient Chinese I Ching (Book of Changes) as his principal method of composing. He later identified the rigor of chess as “a balance with my use of chance operations.” In addition to the checkerboard pattern of Chess Pieces, the white and black inks Cage used for his musical notations evoke the common colors of the game’s two opposing armies, not to mention the palette of the piano keyboard on which the notes were meant to be played. This alternating gridlike color scheme also calls to mind Cubist- inspired “dazzle” camouflage developed during World War I and redeployed in World War II to disguise naval vessels. Repeating geometric schemes of highly contrasting tonal values, often black and white, applied by artists known as camoufleurs created dramatic optical illusions that prevented ships from being targeted. In Chess Pieces, the staves and musical notes function similarly, veiling the chessboard beneath their shimmering warp and woof. Cage may have been familiar with dazzle camouflage thanks to his father, an inventor who obtained patents for submarine air-delivery, steering, and propulsion systems just before World War I and during World War II researched and developed, with his son’s assistance, a radarlike system to help pilots see through fog. This activity constituted the younger Cage’s sole contribution to the war effort; in late 1942 or early 1943, he received a Class III-A deferment from the draft (“hardship for dependents”) due to the ill health of his wife, Xenia. An avowed pacifist and anarchist in later years, Cage condemned the conflict, admitting: “As a child I was very much impressed by the notion of turning the other cheek. You know, if someone struck me on one cheek, I actually did turn the other cheek. I took that seriously.” 

•••

Mrs. P.R. Woodhouse (source unknown)—
A hefty whaler, after some discussion with [British missionary Samuel] Marsden, remarked: “Your religion teaches that if a man is hit on one cheek, he will turn the other.” And he hit Marsden on the right cheek. Marsden obediently offered his left cheek and received a second blow. “Now,” said Marsden, “I have obeyed my Master’s commands. What I do next, he left to my own judgment. Take this.” And he knocked the man down.  

RELATED LINKS ship camouflage online video talks

Everett Warner and WWII Disruptive Ship Camouflage

Reproduced below is an extremely rare photograph of a small team of US Navy ship camouflage artists during World War II. In the center foreground, holding a ship model, is Everett Longley Warner, who was the Chief Civilian Aid in charge of ship camouflage. Warner had served in a similar capacity during World War I. The person in the top left background is unidentified, but the remaining five staff members are (l to r) Bennet Buck, Sheffield Kagy, William Walters, Arthur Conrad, and Robert R. Hays. It was Hays who provided a scan of this photograph when we corresponded with him in the 1990s.

In researching naval camouflage, I have typically emphasized WWI, largely because, as an artist and designer, it is far more intriguing to me than WWII, and, more generally, because I am less interested in military technology than in parallel form developments in camouflage (natural and military) and Modern-era art and design.

Related to that, it has always puzzled me to find that, when I speak to audiences about WWI dazzle ship camouflage, a common response is for people to say that such “high difference” confusion patterns must only have been used in WWI, because (or so they assume) non-visual means of detection (such as radar) were predominant during WWII.

Yet, if I look through my archive of ship camouflage photographs (see examples of WWII below, c1944-45), I easily have as many or more examples of “disruptively patterned” ships from WWII as I have from WWI. An additional consideration is that the same person (Everett L. Warner, as noted above) was responsible for ship camouflage in both World Wars.

USS Passig

USS Lenoir

USS Breckenridge

This is not to say that pattern disruption in WWI and WWII were the same. They were not. As I tried to explain in an earlier published essay, titled Disruption versus Dazzle: Prevalent Misunderstandings about World War I Ship Camouflage (2018), disruptive patterns were still widely used in WWII, but with an important distinction. 

WWII ship camouflage was no longer addressed solely or primarily to the viewpoint of a U-boat periscope, but to multiple observation points, such as the view from the deck of a ship, or from an airplane’s overhead view. As a result, as shown by WWII ship camouflage plans, it became essential to apply disruptive patterns to the horizontal surfaces of a ship, surfaces that would not have been visible during WWI from the viewpoint of a German submarine.

Unless I’m mistaken, this issue has largely been ignored by others who research the subject. But there is at least one exception. It is discussed in an online paper titled Naval Camouflage and its Application on HMC Ships REGINA and MONCTON: A Brief History, published in March 2020. Its author, Timothy Choi, is a doctoral candidate at the University of Calgary’s Centre for Military, Security and Strategic Studies.

RELATED LINKS

Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook

Khaki to Khaki (dust to dust): The ubiquity of camouflage in human experience

Chicanery and Conspicuousness: Social Repercussions of World War I Ship Camouflage 

Camouflage Artist | Robert Webb Jr.

John Singer Sargent, The Hermit (detail), oil on canvas, 1908

Of late, we've been trying to find information about a little-known American artist named Robert (Bob) Webb, Jr. (1897-1987), who apparently served as a ship camoufleur during World War I.

He is interesting for other reasons as well: It seems that he assisted John Singer Sargent (by preparing the paints) when, in 1915, that artist was commissioned to paint a mural (The Triumph of Religion) for the Boston Public Library. According to Webb, he learned from that experience but Sargent paid him not a cent. After World War I, he moved to Florida, where he worked with other artist-designers in decorating the elaborate interior of Ca d'Zan (Venetian dialect for "house of John"), the palatial winter home of John and Mable Ringling (of Ringling Brothers Circus fame) in Sarasota. Decades later, in the 1960s, Webb returned to Florida to participate in the restoration of that mansion, now part of the Ringling Museum of Art. He also worked for Colonial Williamsburg for more than twenty years.

One of the sources I've found thus far is a 204-page book about Webb's life, titled Tramp Artist: The Life of Robert Webb Jr., compiled by his daughter, Thelma Webb Wright, and published in 2003. It features reproductions of numerous works (paintings, interior crafts and Williamsburg signs) and extended excerpts from his tape-recorded memories. The book is largely a tribute to Webb and his first wife Rosa (the author's mother), who died in 1974. I've also found an online source (dated 1999) that's also credited to Thelma Webb Wright, who was apparently at the time a volunteer at the Ringling Museum. A third source is a recent 312-page alternative biography called Apprentice to Master (Trafford Publishing, 2010), written by Webb's second wife, Katheryn Webb, whom he married in 1976.

Regarding Webb's service as a World War I camouflage artist, the two authors (combined with Webb's transcribed account) provide somewhat different narratives. According to the Wright biography, Webb enlisted in the Navy in 1918. Soon after, he was assigned to camouflage in Norfolk as a result of having been recommended for that by Webb's mentor, Massachusetts artist Frederick Mortimer Lamb (1861-1936) and Sargent (the two had met as students at the Académie Julian in Paris) . His commanding officer was Lieutenant-Commander Nathan Bushnell, who (according to Webb's first-person account) "was in charge of all camouflaging for the Navy" (this is contrary to anything I've ever heard) and was also the Chief of Naval Intelligence.

This is Webb's description of how he designed ship camouflage: "My buddy and I used to take photographs of the ships that were not camouflaged… Using the photos as a guide, we'd cut a silhouette out of masonite… I'd make the designs on the sides of the ships, and these other guys would color them in. …[You couldn't actually hide a ship] So I figured the only thing to do with them buggers is to fool them. So I'd paint a submarine on the side of the ship, and I'd write all kinds of cross lines, circles, everything, so they [the German U-boat commanders] couldn't get a line on it. The front of the ship, I'd paint a bow on it. I'd paint another bow, so when they come up she'd be going the other way" (Wright, pp. 14-15).

Wright's book cites another source, an article in the Virginia Gazette (Williamsburg), on April 12, 1986, in which Webb is quoted as follows: "Typical [camouflage] designs were angles and circles. I even painted a submarine on the side of one ship. Colors made no difference as long as they were strong, like dark blue, black or yellow. We made the craziest ships you ever saw in your life." Wright also notes that, years later, when the US entered World War II, Webb attempted to revive his ship camouflage efforts: "[He] had several dozen plywood silhouettes of ships cut and proceeded to paint camouflage designs on them… When he learned about radar and sonar, he said in disgust, 'The Navy used to have iron men and wooden ships, now they have wooden men and iron ships.' His wooden ships became kindling" (p. 18).

In Apprentice to Master, Webb's involvement in ship camouflage is discussed in greater detail. According to that author, Sargent was approached by Rear Admiral William Sims (head of the US Navy), who explained that "a new service was being set up within the Navy that would use art to protect troops, cargo and battleships from enemy torpedoes. It would be called a 'camouflage department.' The secretary asked Sargent's opinion as to what qualifications the men should have who would staff the new department… Sargent, in answering the Secretary of the Navy's request for qualifications of men to fill this roll as camouflage artists, proposed that his young friend Robert James Webb, Jr., be put in charge of the new department! Bob could set the standard for all the other recruits to the new camouflage department. Sargent offered to write Bob Webb a recommendation, which he did, there at the dinner table" (pp. 61-62).

Elsewhere in the same book, it is stated that Webb was "put in charge" of Navy camouflage (p. 83), that he served as  "chief camouflage artist" (p. 93), and that "The camouflage work he did…was unique and copied throughout the Navy" (p. 187). In the online book description at Amazon, an even stronger claim is made that Webb "went on to become the first camouflage artist in the Navy during WWI." Having researched and written about art and camouflage for forty years, I am astonished to learn this now. In all those years, I've never heard of Robert Webb, Jr., and I don't know any other source that claims he played such a prominent role in WWI naval camouflage. Needless to say, the search goes on.

The wizard of oz becomes schooled on camouflage

Walt McDougall (1904), Land of Oz comic page

There is no denying that American artist Walt McDougall (1858-1938) was an extraordinary cartoonist. His work is funny and beautifully drawn. Above is a single full-color newspaper page (1904) for L. Frank Baum's Land of Oz. And at the bottom of this blog post is another full-page comic (1897), amazingly structured, in which works by a number of cartoonists are featured—McDougall's work is inside the triangle on the left of the page. Both of these cartoons are in public domain, and can be accessed as image files on McDougall's Wikipedia page.

McDougall was also interested in camouflage, and he wrote a long newspaper account about that subject during World War I. I've republished the entire text below. But I haven't republished the illustrations he made for it. None of those drawings are of the quality of his cartoons, and one of them is blatantly offensive: it shows military brass having drinks at the Army and Navy Club (where I once lectured—on the subject of camouflage) in Washington DC. An African-American waiter is shown as a clueless black-faced minstrel, as was thought to be funny back then. It brings up painful memories of my own childhood when, as recently as the early 1950s, the movie theatre in the small Iowa community in which I grew up was still featuring "minstrel shows" in which white musicians (there were no black residents at the time) would perform in blackface. With that as a timely disclaimer, here is the text of McDougall's article—

Walt M’Dougall, TRAILING THE CAMOUFLAGE IN WASHINGTON JUNGLES: Certain Adventures of a Patriot Who Endeavored to Do His Bit for Our Newest Art: An “Inside Story” of the Incident That Gave Birth to Camouflage, Written and Illustrated by the Man Who Hereby Sets Forth His Claim to Rank as the Original “Camouflager,” in The Washington Post, June 10, 1917, p. 3—

Camouflage is pronounced as it is spelled, with the “g” soft and mushy, as in “garage,” and with the accent on the “cam.” The art and mystery of concealing batteries, roads and large, important officials by means of artificial scenery was given this name by the French, who knew that it would be a long time before people could determine whether it was a new kind of cheese or a bit of feminine wearing apparel.

Some time ago I became possessed of certain reliable information regarding camouflage through a returned Canadian officer and promptly addressed the War Department a fervent appeal to send me to the French front to gather further information, models, data, and insect parasites for the instruction of our own army. I realized that the task required the imagination of a playwright, the art of a scene painter, the skill of a stage carpenter, the strength of a blacksmith, the nerve of a literary agent, the stomach of a hyena, and the nerve of a motion picture substitute.

Nobody knows what became of that appeal.

New York Got the Edge
Two weeks ago I arrived in Florida in response to a suggestion from a high official to present my plea in person, and almost immediately discovered that while I had been dreaming under the orange blossoms a national camouflage division had been organized in New York, with units in various other cities, and that a number of able-bodied artists already were drilling at night in vacant lots. It was even said that they were wearing uniforms. Now, New York usually tumbles to a new thing only after all the rest of the country has tried it out, and then it starts it off as a new and original fad, but in this case, it seems to have got there first.

Somewhat startled and nervous, I devoted my initial efforts to ascertaining just how far the movement had progressed. Hastily seeking the aforesaid prominent official I was guided to the War Department, where we consulted a bland and amiable Major Blank, who, after candidly admitting that he had never heard of camouflage, said that from what I had revealed to him he didn’t think it quite fair to pester the department about such piffle when it was so busy with really important matters.

“Major, on my word of honor as a gentleman,” I repeated, “I assure you that while camouflage is a new war game, it isn’t piffle. It is saving thousands of lives and guns and military material in France.”

Patting me soothingly on the shoulder, he suggested: “Why not go over on your own account as a private citizen and study it?”

When I asked him, rather testily, I admit, how long he thought I’d last gumshoeing around the French front with a camera, a sketchbook, and a tape measure, picking centimeters and calories off the big guns, he appeared a trifle hurt, but when he got his breath he said that the War Department couldn’t bother with “frills” at this time and that perhaps I might manage to get away with the second or third division of troops going over.

I asked the next man who was consulted, point-blank, if he had ever heard of camouflage.

Thought It a New Insect Powder
“Yes,” said he in a flash; “It is the new insect powder they’re getting from the Phillippines.” However, he was only a civilian.

I began to see, dimly, that my task was going to difficult. We went to the Cosmos Club to dine, where I met an African explorer, who wanted to bet me that camouflage was a subspecies of the dingo family. Late at night, reduced to a sort of dumb despair, I went to the Press Club, where I encountered artist Felix Mahoney, [a cartoonist as well] who proved to have at his finger-ends all the knowledge there is about “Who’s Who and Where” in camouflaging. He formed the local unit and invited me to witness the evening drill the following night. I was surprised to learn that they were not drilling with paintbrushes, but actually learning the military manual under the instruction of a real army officer. This looked like something really tangible.

I also learned that evening that among other things it is supposed that “the camouflage artist is like any other soldier. He goes where he is sent, and, in addition to his arms, he carries a 6-inch sketch box, which is his palette, one-half of the box fitting on his thumb in true palette fashion, while the other half holds his little sketch boards and colors. The scene to be ‘camouflaged’ is sketched exactly as it appears in colors that match the true ones. This sketch is conveyed to the base of operations, where other artists copy it upon a large canvas. The framework, if there is any, is designed and the finished ‘scene’ is rushed to the spot it is intended to conceal.”

When I pointed out that if the scenery was already there in situ it scarcely needed to be disguised by an artificial creation precisely imitating its details to conceal it from the enemy, I was regarded with pity.

He Is the Original Camouflager
Now, I need to explain, perhaps, my interest in this matter. Long before the famous bank robbery where the burglars painted a fake safe and robbed the genuine one behind it, in my boyhood days, in fact, I cleverly painted a life-size effigy of my slight and skinny self and set it up in the cornfield where I was supposed to be watching the crows, and while mother thought I was on the job, I was lying under a willow by the creek fishing for perch. While I expose past duplicity with regret, my mother being long dead, I feel it needful to establish my claim as the original camouflager.

Well, I had already begun to suspect that I stood a swell chance of getting to the front, but I persisted. The next day I met a man in another department who confessed that he had heard that the French used artists in the army to “stimulate scenery” in deceiving the enemy. Needless to say, he meant “simulate.” I saw the young and enthusiastic artists drill that evening and conferred with them. They expected, every one of them, to be sent to the front, but they were rather misty as to how they were to be instructed, and where, in their special form of military art.  I took occasion to explain that I deserved to be sent over in order to qualify as an instructor for just such lads back here at home. None of these boys wanted to be generals or even captains—they wanted to camouflage.

After three days I got so that I found myself in the Army and Navy Club ordering camouflage cocktails for an aged major general and I realized that I had reached a critical stage. I proceeded to obtain a new slant on the subject. Armed with a note from Mr. Tumulty I sought the Assistant Secretary of War, but his private secretary, an alert and observing young fellow, seeing the wild, haunted look in my eyes, the hectic four-flush mantling my cheeks and my ill-concealed impatience, steered me up against some husky colonels in a remote part of the building. These officers, kindly and genial, humored me by listening to my ravings, and finally Mr. McKenna sent me by the department bus to the War College, having previously telephoned General Kuhn that I was coming.

They Treated Him Kindly
Right here I want to express my appreciation of the unfailing kindness, cheerful patience and delightful good humor of every official whose valuable time I monopolized during the week. Although they uniformly refused to take me seriously, they took me in and made me at home in every case. I lunched with the general staff on Friday, after walking many miles across country to the War College, a point usually reached only by airplane and wireless, and although I had neither guide, compass or chart, I got there before everything was eaten.

Here I received another shock. I found that General Kuhn actually knew all about camouflage! I mean, all that is known in the United States. That is nearly nothing, but the general had heard about what had been revealed. His delightful personality eased the pain I felt when I saw that he also regarded camouflage as frillery and military lingeries, as it were, but when he kindly enlightened me as to the number (something like 76,000) of eager, earnest souls who ardently desired to sail for France this week in order to study gas-bombing, trench ventilation, painless starvation, cathedral reconstruction, explosive frankfurters, dog training, the German system of converting their dead into toilet soaps, smokeless tobacco and the like on the battlefield, I saw a great light. I now perceive why departmental business proceeds slowly and painfully. If officials are as invariably polite, courteous, and obliging to every crank, bug, and jobseeker as they were to me it is wonderful that anything is accomplished, and it follows that camouflaging the departments is as necessary as anything else.

He Gave Up the Quest
The last man I interviewed on the subject was the celebrated sculptor, Mr. Paul Barlett, chairman of the executive committee of the Washington camouflage division. He assured me that a small army of artists, eminent and otherwise, was preparing to go to France, where they were to take up this pursuit.

“Do you mean that the government will send this division over as an actual organization of artists?” I asked.

He intimated that such was his understanding.

“And when this army, well-drilled and qualified as soldiers, arrives at the front, will it be marched somewhere and proceed to become students of camouflage, under the instruction of 700 busy scene painters now occupied in disguising France, or will they just camouflage around, picking up the art between the barrage fire and the hospitals?” I persisted.

Mr. Bartlett’s manner suggested that my question peeved him, or, at least, so it seemed to me, and I obtained no answer to the question of how our earnest seekers after knowledge would become qualified to proceed to camouflage. However, this finished my efforts to inject my own personality into the movement. I will not see France until the war is over, and I will never know more about camouflaging than anybody else does.

Walt McDougall and others (1897)

Page Spreads from New Book on Dazzle Ships

From DAZZLE SHIPS: World War I and the Art of Confusion

Above Four page spreads from a fantastic new, award-winning book by Chris Barton, with illustrations by Victo Ngai, titled DAZZLE SHIPS: World War I and the Art of Confusion. Minneapolis MN: Millbrook Press, 2017. ISBN 978-1-5124-1014-3. Below The book's spectacular cover.

Midwell Crampton Wilson, Thoughts in Passing. Carroll County Citizen-Times (Delphi IN), August 17, 1918, pp. 1 and 3—

“Do you know anything about camouflage?”

“No, I never eat foreign cheeses.” Now this conversation MUST have taken place in the early stages of the war, for since the American army has been in the thick of the fight, we use the word camouflage as if it had always been in our vocabulary and we know it isn’t a brand of cheese, either.

The war has made quite a contribution to our stock of words. Scarcely a day but that we use “over-the-top.” “Over there,” “somewhere in France,” “carry-on,” “morale,” "hooverize” and “let’s go” are familiar expressions that we use almost constantly.

But few war words are more popular than “camouflage.” The Old Settlers’ ice cream was camouflaged with syrup and condensed milk. A nice brown meringue on top of bread pudding makes it look like something good and that is camouflage. When the guarantors of a picnic eat the back and neck (leaving the drumstick and pulley-bone for the guests) and register great joy in so doing, they are doing the camouflage act that our mothers have done all their lives. The girl at the Old Settlers’ who wore the furs was camouflaging her feelings for style’s sake but when

    “Little grains of powder
     Little dabs of paint
     Make the girl of forty
     Look like what she ain’t”

then it is, that camouflaging is really well done.

I have read that it is the most celebrated word coined in the great war, will undoubtedly live in the dictionaries, and the name and the art which it labels will be credited to the French, who first applied the science of “concealing coloration” as a means of military disguise. But credit for the original idea and its development should rightfully go to an American, Abbott H. Thayer, one of America’s most distinguished painters. It is said that more than twenty years ago Mr. Thayer, as a huntsman and student of bird and animal life, made an exhaustive study of nature’s method in protecting wild things.

The chameleon is an artful little camouflager, being able to change his color to resemble the object on which he lies. It is an excellent defense for him, as he is too small to fight, and does not care to spend too much time fleeing from his enemies, who desire his body for dinner.

The American bobwhite adopts a medley of colors—reddish, black, brown, yellow and white—that completely harmonized with the foliage colors during all seasons of the year. He is present in person, but lost to sight.

The parrot fortifies the defense produced by his rancorous voice by brilliant colors that blend perfectly with the brilliant foliage of his tropical home.

The present camouflage is simply making objects, principally military machines, look like something else—a haystack or a bush—in which practice the painters are simply copying from Nature’s most effective disguises, through which only the expert can see.

The modern army is now using every known device for camouflage. The olive drab or khaki-colored uniform blends into the landscape and is lost to sight much sooner than the more brilliant colors formerly worn by troops. Flashing breastplates, buttons and polished equipments of all kinds have been absolutely discarded for others that do not shine.

The Alpine troops, fighting above the snow lines, went to great extremes in painting themselves white, so that there was no contrast with snow during the day and for night duty troops have painted themselves black for easier hiding. During the spring and early summer green colors are used, and as soon as the season progresses, dabs of yellow, red and golden tints are used to duplicate the color effects of the advancing season. So it is that camouflage dates back farther than the Trojan Horse—it dates back to Nature herself, who gave the cow her mottled hide, no doubt in anticipation of the amateur hunter. The American Indian, by the way, was an adept at camouflage.

A few years ago, a party of us went to the National Military Home, near Marion [IN], to spend Decoration Day. Mr. Wilson was convalescing from an operation for appendicitis. I was thin from worrying. The two girls with us were pale and wan. My father looked at the party and then remarked in his characteristic way that we looked like a bunch of empty snake skins. After dinner on Decoration Day, the two girls looked so exceedingly pale that we insisted they go upstairs and lie down. They were upstairs less than a half hour but when they came down, they looked so wonderfully rested that the whole party became more cheerful. They had color in their cheeks and theirs smiles were bewitching instead of haunting. The change was marvelous and so worthwhile because it helped the “morale” (another war word) of the company. One had to look at these girls twice to notice the camouflage, put on from a box of rouge and some good face powder.

Ever since that day, I have been an ardent believer in face camouflage. Of course, I don’t want to see a girl painted like a battleship, but I can’t help believing in a certain amount of make-up. It is the duty of everyone to appear as beautiful as possible. Red cheeks are prettier than sallow ones and a powdered skin is much neater than an unpowdered one—if you can just keep the world from knowing that you use either rouge or powder. I never have become reconciled to lipstick or an elaborate use of carmine. But just enough to make one look well—and just enough not to get caught at it. This is my notion of real camouflage.

Another form of camouflage the men use is bluffing. I heard the other day of a young man who was in charge of a newly plotted realty tract, upon which the only building was the office of the company. Upon seeing the first person to enter the door, he hastily took down the telephone receiver and commenced:

“Yes, sir, I think we can agree on those terms. Thirty lots in one parcel and twenty in another. Yes, sir, the price is satisfactory—$30,000 at the transfer and the remainder in sixty days. Did you say I could meet you in the morning at nine o’clock and receive your check for $10,000 as the initial payment? Very well, sir.”

Hanging up the receiver, this busy person turned to the man who had entered the office.

“Is there anything I can do for you, sir?”

“Naw, not a thing,” returned the visitor. “I have just come to connect up your telephone, that’s all.”

The fellow was caught in camouflaging and therein lies the sin.

Another instance:

An old fellow on his death bed, in making his will, murmured to his lawyer: “And to each of my employees who have been with me twenty years or more I bequeath $20,000.”

“Holy smoke! What generosity!” the lawyer exclaimed.

“No, not at all,” said the sick man. “You see, none of them have been with me over a year; but it will look good in the papers, won’t it?”

This was a camouflaged will.

Now, Bill Nye [Edgar Wilson Nye], the humorist who appeared in Delphi [IN] with [James Whitcomb] Riley years ago, didn’t believe in camouflage at all. One time he had a cow to sell and he advertised her as follows:

“Owing to my ill health, I will sell at my residence, in township 19, range 18, according to the government survey, one plush raspberry cow, aged eight years. She is of undoubted courage and gives milk frequently. To one who does not fear death in any form she would be a great boon. She is very much attached to her present home with a stay chain, but she will be sold to anyone who will agree to treat her right. She is one-fourth shorthorn and three-fourths hyena. I will also throw in a double-barrel shotgun, which goes with her. Her name is Rose. I would rather sell her to a nonresident.”

I have often wondered if he sold the cow.

Camouflage is a useful art and an interesting study and we await with interest the homecoming of our boys, who will be able to tell us more of the real wartime camouflage. Until then we will use the word at our own sweet will and make it mean all kinds of arts in which “a gay deceiver” is proficient.

don't paint your Chevy Blazer in high visibility orange

Above Full-page feature article on WWII camouflage, titled Dazzle Painting Amazingly Effective in Modern Warfare, as published in the Boston Sunday Post in the Color Feature Section, December 17, 1939, p. 4. Large size, readable online text can be found by searching vintage newspaper sites.

•••

The following interview was conducted through email exchanges in the early months of 2013. It was a conversation between Rich Dana, now Special Collections and Archives' Sackner Archive Project coordinator librarian at the University of Iowa, and Roy R. Behrens, now Professor Emeritus and Distinguished Scholar at the University of Northern Iowa. The resulting text was published in Issue Number 8 of Obsolete! Magazine: The Journal of DIY Analog Anarchy (Iowa City IA), which Dana was founding editor of, an experimental magazine that is now apparently obsolete (aha!). In its published form, the interview was a bit longer, and slight adjustments in wording have also been made. Copyright for the text belongs to the interview participants.

•••

Obsolete Magazine [Rich Dana]: I discovered your work while doing some research on dazzle camouflage. You’ve written quite a bit about dazzle patterns as well as the role of artists in the history of camouflage. Can you give us some background on how you became interested in that?

Roy Behrens: I started writing about it in the late 1960s. I got into camouflage because I was a graphic designer. The big “trade secret” in design is knowing how people are likely to see. At some point I realized that I could learn about that by hiding or disguising things. In other words, camouflage uses the exact same principles as design. It’s just reverse engineering.

OM: Was this like subliminal advertising?

RB: It’s certainly not unrelated to that, but they’re not the same. In subliminal advertising, it was claimed that images were concealed in magazine ads and film trailers, to function as “hidden persuaders.” The principles that we apply in design and camouflage are more straightforward, such as pointing, rhyming and lining things up. They are subliminal to some extent, because they influence us, regardless of whether we are aware of it.

OM: Obviously, the idea of camouflage is an ancient one. When did it become a field of scientific research?

RB: We can thank Charles Darwin for that. Scientists and naturalists became interested in animal camouflage in the late 19th century, because they thought it offered proof of natural selection, the survival of the fittest. But a big breakthrough came in the 1890s when an American artist named Abbott Handerson Thayer realized that camouflage is based on the same “tricks of the trade” that he had learned while studying art at the French Academy.

OM: I'm fascinated by the idea that camo is a type of art that is used to defeat technology. It seems that it’s almost akin to magic to me. Of course, Arthur C. Clarke said that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Is camouflage art, technology or both?

RB: I think it’s pertinent to both art and technology, but to lots of other stuff as well. The key thing to remember is that camouflage depends on a relationship. It’s a perpetually shifting relation between an observer (these days it could be a drone or whatever) and the object or person that’s being observed. A deer can’t see high visibility orange, but that same color is blaringly obvious to humans. To camouflage something, you have to know what kind of visual system you are trying to conceal it from. In other words, camouflage has to keep up with surveillance, and vice versa—it takes two to tango.

OM: Camo is typically associated with the military. Are there civilian uses for camo, other than hunting?

RB: Actually, there’s a long rich tradition of using camouflage for non-military purposes. For example, you just mentioned magic, which famously works by “fooling the eye.” And there are lots of other uses in stage productions, fashion design, cosmetics, architecture and so on. And of course, some of the most successful camouflage practitioners are in marketing and politics. Camouflage is also used in other forms such as language. Maybe I should mention that recently I’ve been exchanging emails with a university student in the UK who’s working on proposals for benign, non-military uses of camouflage. There’s a lot that could be done in that area. Mostly he’s developing ways to make certain things around us (windmills or cell towers, for example) less like eyesores, and, at same time, to make critical landmarks more conspicuous. But this is a shifting relation as well: Since it’s common now for everyone to walk around in camouflage or high visibility orange clothing, it’s not as easy to be sure who’s really an emergency worker and who isn’t.

OM: Let's talk about dazzle camouflage. To me, dazzle represents very much the spirit of the Modern era. Does that make sense? It seems to be consistent with what was going on at the start of the 20th century, technologically and artistically, and, in some ways, even in psychology, in the use of abstract patterns, and so on.

RB: Over the years, a lot people have said exactly that about the resemblance between camouflage and certain branches of Modernism. During World War I, one of the British Vorticists [Edward Wadsworth] was a dock supervisor for ship camouflage. And there’s the famous story about Picasso seeing French military camouflage for the first time, and saying to Gertrude Stein, “Aha, we invented that. That’s Cubism.” There’s a ton of other examples of this, and my books are attempts to identify those. Hundreds (maybe thousands) of artists, designers and architects served as military camouflage consultants (they ecame known as “camoufleurs”) during both World Wars. But oddly enough,those who were responsible for the most bizarre dazzle patterns had been mostly traditional artists before. And after the war ended, their art careers completely collapsed—because, ironically, their artwork wasn’t Modern enough.

OM: Can you talk a little about how dazzle was conceived and developed, and what made dazzle patterns effective?

RB: The term as it’s now commonly used is more or less synonymous with any pattern that is made up of a hodgepodge of high contrast, distinctively-colored shapes. I call it “high difference” camouflage (because the figure breaks apart), and I distinguish it from “high similarity” camouflage (in which a figure blends in with its background or surrounding). Historically, however, the meaning and purpose of “dazzle painting” was much more specific. It was a kind of ship camouflage that was developed by British artists during World War I. Its primary function was not to hide a ship on the ocean (that wasn’t possible back then), but rather to make it confusing to view through the periscope of a German U-boat. It’s a complex subject, but the idea was mostly to “spoil the aim” (to throw off the calculations) of submarine torpedo gunners. It’s popular now for people to say that dazzle painting was ineffective, but the more you learn about the circumstances, the more apparent it becomes that it did indeed work.

OM: I’ve noticed that dazzle patterns are increasingly used in fashion. Asymmetrical haircuts and face-paint are being used successfully to subvert facial recognition software and surveillance cameras. Any thoughts on this? It's a very 80's cyberpunk dystopian sci-fi look. I love it! But do you think it will be effective? It seems to have a deus ex machina quality to it, in the sense that it undermines digital technology, not with more advanced technology, but with age-old simple tools like abstraction and facepainting.

RB: That’s a curious turnabout, isn’t it. I’ve been following the research on how to prevent digital face recognition, and apparently it works for now. But that too is indebted to Modernism, since it’s related to research that began with the Gestalt psychologists in the 1920s. Not surprisingly, the Gestaltists also wrote about camouflage, and about graphic design principles.

OM: That's really interesting. So essentially it’s about how the brain processes data that it receives from the eyes. Facial recognition computers programs look for geometric specifics of the structure of the face, rather than hair color, skin color, etc, which are really culturally programmed ways that humans see.

RB: Much of what we’re talking about is being confirmed by current brain research. There seem to be aspects of vision that are learned and culture-laden. On the other hand (and this especially interests me), there are also inherent, hard-wired defaults of vision that “come in the box” with everyone’s brain. If we go to war with another country, we can be sure that they will be hoodwinked (to some extent) by the same camouflage patterns that throw us off: figure-ground blending, figure disruption (or dazzle), mimicry, and the combined use of blending and dazzle.

OM: Correct me if I'm wrong here, but I think historically there are a lot of examples of technologically “inferior” forces defeating vastly "superior" forces by using the environment to their advantage. Doesn't it seem like the growing surveillance state will always be running to catch up with the low-tech workarounds of the indigenous population?

RB: Well, you could put it that way. Again, the two sides have to correlate, and conditions are constantly changing. But in a way, everything’s a workaround, whether low tech or high. So you could say that, yes, high tech will always be struggling to keep one step ahead of Rube Goldbergian workarounds. But in the same way, low tech will always be struggling to jerry-rig new workarounds. One thing is certain: their dance is unlikely to ever conclude, short of a massive, finite end.

OM: I’m changing direction here: I started thinking about this when I bought an old Chevy Blazer from the National Guard. It is painted "forest" camo, I guess you would call it, mostly olive drab with black and brown. It's a spray can job, so it’s wearing out fast and I need to repaint it. So I began researching other patterns, and thinking about the Iowa landscape. Ideally, what sort of patterns and colors would be most effective in our environment?

RB: It depends on why you’re doing this. If you effectively decrease the vehicle’s visibility by matching it with the Iowa landscape, you might increase your chances of getting hit by another driver. And even then, what is the “Iowa landscape”? Urban, woodland, cornfield, grass? And in what season of the year? Now and then I’ve thought about putting a camouflage pattern on my car, but I’ve always opted out. In relation to choosing a season, if I painted it white for the winter, I wouldn’t want to drive it home during one of those Iowa snowstorm white-outs.

OM: I also considered putting a WWI naval dazzle pattern on it, just as an art project. It would be sort of ironic because it would be the most noticeable vehicle in the parking lot.

RB: I thought about this too, when I was considering my own car. Like you, I have a great fondness for dazzle patterns, so I thought I wouldn’t want my car to blend with the surroundings. I would prefer that it stand out dramatically (like those WWI dazzle-painted ships), and be painted in a clever way that uses confusing brightly-colored shapes to distort the physical shape of the car. But then I thought, that’s really asking for trouble: First, it would stand out in the parking lot and probably get vandalized. Second, when I’m on the road, it might be so confusing to see that I could end up getting hit. Or third, if it’s too distracting to other drivers, they might collide with other cars. Well, whatever you decide, don’t paint your Chevy Blazer in high visibility orange—or you’ll get run into by a deer.

OM: Ha! That would be ironic to say the least! Here's a thought; from what you have said about relationships, landscape and how people see, perhaps a car painted with primer would be the best all purpose camouflage. Culturally, I think people might look past it because primer paint represents lower social status. Just the way people look past a homeless person on the street. Parked in a lot it might be less likely to be broken into. In a field, it might be seen as abandoned. On the flipside of course, driving home late at night, it might be more likely to draw the attention of law enforcement, who are programmed to see something else.

RB: If we continue with this train of thought, we may end up putting antlers on your car, covering it with flocked wallpaper—or better yet, with chia sprouts—and transforming it into an automated jackalope. That might cut down on traffic too, since no one else would want to be seen driving beside it.…

 RELATED LINKS    

Dazzle Camouflage: What is it and how did it work?

 Nature, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Women's Rights, and Camouflage

 Embedded Figures, Art, and Camouflage

 Art, Gestalt, and Camouflage

 Optical science meets visual art

 Disruption versus dazzle

 Chicanery and conspicuousness

 Under the big top at Sims' circus

Genevieve Cowles | Connecticut Woman Camoufleur

Genevieve Cowles, c1932

Above A news photograph of a Connecticut-based artist named Genevieve Alameda Cowles (1871-1950). We blogged about her several years ago in relation to her service during World War I as a camouflage designer for the US Shipping Board, which was a highly unusual role for a woman at the time. She was trained in camouflage design by William Andrew Mackay. An illustrator, stained glass window designer, and mural painter, she was unusual in other ways as well. She was the twin sister of Maude Alice Cowles (1871-1905), who had a parallel career, and with whom she worked collaboratively until the latter’s early death. Below is a photograph of them at age eighteen. 

Maude and (right) Genevieve Cowles

Shortly after her sister’s death, Genevieve proposed to paint a religious mural for the chapel at the State Prison at Wethersfield CT, using the prisoners as models. In the process, she took up the issue of prison reform, a cause she continued to advocate for the rest of her life. In 1932, she wrote a lengthy article (excerpts from which are reprinted below) in which she compared certain aspects of ship camouflage to prejudicial assumptions about the character of prisoners. She illustrated the article with two drawings of the same ship, the first one disruptively camouflaged, the other one not (see drawings reproduced below)—

Genevieve Cowles, CAMOUFLAGE AND CRIME: Local Artist Reveals Secrets of Black Magic That Protected Our Ships During World War and Draws Striking Analogy in Hartford Courant (Hartford CT), May 13, 1932—

During the Great War, when England was losing five vessels a day from submarine attacks, an artist named [Norman] Wilkinson invited a system of painted blots on ships called “dazzle camouflage” that actually worked like Black Magic. 

Through his periscope, the enemy U-Boat commander could survey his intended victim far more distinctly than with the naked eye. He had proved his ability by sinking many un-camouflaged ships. But when ships appeared painted with black blots it proved impossible for him to discover under those blots her real shape, and position, and the direction in which she was going.

Deprived of this hitherto available, most necessary information, the commander’s deadly torpedo was fired in vain, and often the submarine itself was sunk in consequence.

Not all the guns in creation could ward off the deadly torpedo when accurately fired at an unforeseen moment from an unseen quarter under the sea. This menacing problem, which no amount of force alone could successfully combat was solved by intelligence.

The artists, by using paint in scientific designs of optical illusions, saved the allied ships, without which our troops could never had reached France, or even engaged in winning the war.

Out of 12,000 ships camouflaged by Americans, we lost only nine. 

Only those who knew, or could guess, the laws of optical illusion used in these dazzle designs could see through them. It made not the slightest difference in facing these deceptions whether one were a villain or a saint, a patriot or a traitor, a friend or foe, one could surely be deluded if one did not know the laws of the deceptions.…

As an officially trained member of the Women’s Reserve Camouflage Corps during the Great War, I have received from the government permission to divulge the information that I possess. 

Mr George H. Rock, chief of the Navy Department Bureau of Construction and Repair, Washington DC, in a recent letter to me wrote: “While at that time (during the World War) the information was held as confidential, since the war it has not been so regarded, and there is no reason known to this bureau why you should not use such information as you may have as to camouflage practice during the war.” Also, Mr William Andrew Mackay, New York camoufleur of the marine service under which I was trained, has written to me saying: “You can rest assured that you will be given all assistance by this office.”

Let us begin by examining the accompanying drawing of a war camouflage ship seen approximately at the point of attack. In order to take affect, the torpedo should be fired at a two-point, or between a two-point and a three-point view. 

That is, one should fire when she was coming head on, showing the prow and a little of one side, or else retreating, showing the stern and part of one side.

The low visibility system of camouflage, so successful on land, and successful in a fog at sea, proved useless in bright daylight on a quiet sea, because the lights and shadows on the angles of the prow and stern, and especially on the deck houses, would betray the position of the ship and the direction in which she was going. If the U-boat commander could estimate correctly one single rectangle on the victim ship, he could sink her.

The camoufleur solved this problem first by painting sold black blots over these telltale angles. Later on he discovered that more or less dark bands or bars or spots would serve as well as solid blacks.…

The submarine commander was only allowed seven seconds for each observation by rolling waves that at such intervals obscured his vision through his periscope.…

Now compare this camouflaged ship drawing with an exact tracing of this identical ship in this identical position, also reproduced here, and you will see that she is not traveling in either direction that she seems to have when camouflaged, and the torpedo will not strike where intended.…

RELATED LINKS

Optical science meets visual art 

Disruption versus dazzle 

Chicanery and conspicuousness 

Under the big top at Sims' circus

WWI Camouflage Artist | Frederick Alexander Pawla

Ship Camouflage Scheme (starboard) / Frederick A. Pawla

The surname of Frederick A(lexander) Pawla (1876-1964) rhymes with Paula and is easily misspelled. Most likely that’s one of the reasons why his contributions to World War I ship camouflage are rarely acknowledged.

The facts of his life are at issue as well. It seems that he was born in Wimbledon, England, in 1876 (another source claims Scotland), but left home at age 14 to become a sailor. Various sources make differing claims: Some say that he left home to join the US Navy, but a news article from 1952 states that he left London not for the US but for Sydney AU, where he worked on Australian government ships. He eventually turned to painting and studied there with Australian marine painter William Lister Lister. But “the wanderlust seized him and he came to the United States.” Others claim that he was a scout in the Boer War, that he participated in the first Chino-Japanese war (1894-95), and that he served in the US Merchant Marine.

In that 1952 news article, when he and his wife had recently moved to Santa Cruz CA, Pawla was said to have previously lived on the French Riviera, in Hawaii, Tahiti, and Australia, as well as in various regions of the US.

According to ship modeler Aryeh Wetherhorn, Pawla was a “highly important” marine camoufleur for the US during World War I, but is now “largely forgotten.” On Wetherhorn’s website are screen shots of government documents from the NARA (National Archives and Records Administration), in which Pawla is listed as having originated the “dazzle” camouflage designs for various ships, but is insufficiently credited because he is listed as Paula.

His wartime contributions to camouflage service are noted only briefly in another news article from 1922, when he and his wife had resettled from New York to Tampa FL. It is also stated that he had made a painting of the USS Leviathan, which “earned for the artist an official commendation of the highest kind.”

Following WWI, Benedict Crowell, US Assistant Secretary of War, openly applauded Pawla’s camouflage efforts. In 1921, Crowell wrote an overview of the war. He noted that dazzle-painting was officially adopted in 1917 as standard practice for American ship camouflage, made possible by a consensus among the US Navy, the Shipping Board, and the Embarkation Service of the AEF (American Expeditionary Forces, which at the time was the title for the US Army).

Pawla was in charge of camouflage for the AEF Embarkation Service. He oversaw the camouflage of “many of the army transports, particularly cargo carriers,” and, according to Crowell, was “one of the most valuable men in the Government for this sort of work.” But most accounts of WWI American ship camouflage are focused on the efforts of the Navy and the Shipping Board, and the fact that Pawla was associated with the Army may also explain why his work is infrequently cited. At least two post-war news articles state that he worked for the Army, one of which claims that he “was commissioned as an officer in the infantry, after which he took charge of the inauguration of camouflage in the army transport service.”

If he oversaw the camouflage of cargo ships that transported horses, equipment and other supplies to Europe, it may not necessarily mean that he himself designed the actual camouflage schemes. As Wetherhorn goes on to note—

[Pawla’s role as the New York embarkation officer] involved the scheduling, coordination, and supervision of ships that carried the US Army Expeditionary Force to France. It also meant [that] he managed to schedule the painting of camouflage patterns on all types of ships that were involved. It was Lieutenant Pawla [who] arranged time at the various shipyards for painting camouflage while the vessels were waiting to embark troops or load cargo before joining a convoy to cross the Atlantic.

At the same time, his direct involvement in designing camouflage may be confirmed in other ways. In recent years, concurrent with the WWI Centenary, a limited number of full-color diagrams for WWI ship camouflage schemes (hand-colored in gouache in some cases, or more often as lithographic prints) have been scanned and posted on US government websites. The artists who designed the schemes are sometimes noted in red pencil, and the name Pawla is clearly written on several of those. One of those prints is reproduced at the top of this page.

A duplicate, nearly complete set of the lithographic prints (455 in number) is in the collection of the Fleet Library at the Rhode Island School of Design, but they lack the penciled-in names of the artists who designed them.

While the sources are unlisted, Wetherhorn* provides a list of ships that he credits as having been “camouflaged” by Pawla. With considerable effort, one can find photographs of the majority of these ships, but not when they were covered with dazzle patterns. His list includes the following (when I’ve wondered if ship names were incorrectly listed, I’ve added suggested alternatives in brackets): SS Arcadia, SS Bayano [SS Bayamo?], SS Buford, SS City of Atlanta, SS Duca Degli Abruzzi, SS Hewitt, SS Kilpatrick, SS Montanian [SS Montanan?], SS Munwood, SS Pennsylvanian [USS Scranton], SS Eagle, SS El Occidente, SS El Sol, SS Findland [SS Finland?], SS Floridian, SS George H. Henry, SS Itaska, SS Kentuckian, SS Edward Luckenbach, SS Medina, SS Montosa [SS Montoso?], SS Newton, SS Neches, SS Oregonian, Rondo [SS War Wonder?], SS Panaman, SS San Jacinto, SS Tamayo, SS Tiger, SS Tivies [SS Tivives?], SS Tungus [SS Tongos?] and SS Tyr.

USS Panaman (c1918) in dazzle camouflage

I was able to find a photograph of the dazzle-painted USS Panaman (reproduced above), and there are also online images of several ships that were named after various members of the Luckenbach family, the USS Edward Luckenbach being one. During WWI, the Luckenbach Steamship Company, headed by Edgar F. Luckenbach, supplied at least eight cargo ships for the purpose of transporting troops. In a document dated 1918, Edwin F. Luckenbach is on a list of those who studied ship camouflage in New York under William Andrew Mackay.

Based on material online, especially historic newspapers, Pawla may have accomplished considerably more as a ship camoufleur than he did as an artist in subsequent years. As a civilian artist, according to the 1952 news article, “His greatest work, in point of both magnitude and interest, is a cyclorama of [the Battle of] Chateau-Thierry, which has been exhibited in many of the large cities in the US.” This may be the same cyclorama that was installed at Luna Park in Coney Island in 1927. News reports in Brooklyn described it as follows—

fifty feet high and three hundred [and] sixty-five feet in circumference. There are more than one thousand sheets of galvanized iron, eight feet long, weighing seven and one-half tons. There are two thousand electric lamps with fifteen thousand additional watts to produce the varied effects.…As you stand on an elevated platform, you see the war fields, machine gun nests, snipers, heavy artillery and airplanes in action, in one of the world’s most exacting struggles.

An earlier cyclorama had recreated the Battle of Gettysburg, but this one for Chateau-Thierry, a journalist claimed, was “the most sensational and educational attraction ever brought to this famous resort” and “has broken all records for attendance.” Regrettably, neither Pawla nor any other artists are mentioned as being responsible for the cyclorama.**  ***

Pawla’s other artwork is not so illustrious. In California, he is credited with having created three murals (the main panel is seventy feet wide) about California history for installation at the high school in Burlingame CA. For years, these were said to have been commissioned by the government as Depression-era WPA (Works Progress Administration) public artworks. But several contemporaneous news articles make it clear that the murals were completed in 1934 and purchased by the school itself, using funds raised by the students.

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* Another interesting post by Wetherhorn (not on his website but on the Naval History Blog) is a brief account of the camouflage contributions of the well-known American artist Arthur B. Carles and his sister Sara Elizabeth Carles. His post provides considerable insight into the activities of Sara Carles and other American women in connection with ship camouflage. Reproduced on the page are several Reports on Camouflaged Ships, indicating that these women were land observers (not designers of camouflage schemes) who were stationed at various harbors and assigned to making colored drawings/paintings of any camouflaged ships that they observed, both US and others. As we have blogged about earlier, Thomas Hart Benton had the same assignment at Norfolk, as did other artists.

** Update (same day as original post): Having now searched further in online newspapers, I am increasingly hesitant about crediting Pawla with the Chateau-Thierry cyclorama. I have found no mention of his name. Instead, I have now discovered reports that say it was an "imported cyclorama" and that the actual painting required the skills of "eighteen French painters." At the same time, how many Chateau-Thierry cycloramas can there be? Perhaps he supervised the project and/or its installation at Coney Island.

*** In an essay published a few years ago, titled "Setting the Stage for Deception: Perspective Distortion in World War I Camouflage" (full text online), we talked about the relatedness of the use of forced perspective in cycloramas and ship camouflage.

Sources
Anon. Recollections of… Brooklyn Life and Activities of Long Island Society (Brooklyn NY), May 14, 1927, p. 19.

Anon. The cyclorama… Brooklyn Life and Activities of Long Island Society (Brooklyn NY) , August 13, 1927, p. 16.

Anon. MURAL ARTIST IN TAMPA TO OPEN STUDIO: WAS IN CAMOUFLAGE DEPARTMENT. The Tampa Tribune (Tampa FL) November 3, 1922, p. 7.

Anon. PAWLA PAINTINGS ON EXHIBIT SOON AT BURLINGAME HI. San Mateo Times (San Mateo CA), April 20, 1934.

Crowell, Benedict. The Giant Hand: Our Mobilization and Control of Industry and Natural Resources, 1917-1918. New Haven CT: Yale University Press, 1921.

Hanifin, Ada. Paintings by Pawla on View: Soldier-of-Fortune and Veteran of Many Wars Holds One-Man-Show of Ships at Gumps, in San Francisco Examiner, Sunday, February 4, 1934.

Rawson, Laura. FAMED MARINE ARTIST FREDERICK PAWLA NOW LIVING IN SANTA CRUZ in Santa Cruz Sentinel-News, November 7, 1952, p. 2.