Sue Slick, Collection Information Specialist
While we’re still marveling over the history and heroics of The Ghost Army, marking the season of gratitude and the honoring of our Veterans, we also remember and honor the artists in our collection whose art served the U.S. military in wartime. Some applied their art training directly to their service, while others sketched their wartime experiences in their spare time while serving.
A few of our collection artists served as camoufleurs in Europe during World War I. This is defined as, “a person who designed and implemented military camouflage in one of the world wars of the twentieth century.”
Louis Rosenberg, Abraham Rattner, and Kerr Eby each served in the American Camouflage Corps in France. Though the French and British had army sections dedicated to camouflage work, resistance to a dedicated American camouflage section persisted until Gen. John J. Pershing, Commander in Chief of the American Expeditionary Forces, called for the formation of a camouflage company to support the American land forces during World War I. It was ultimately called Company A, 40th Regiment of the Corps of Engineers, formally designated on December 4, 1917. Its primary mission was to provide protective concealment to troops, assets, civilians, and infrastructure.
Louis Rosenberg [American, 1890-1983]
Oregon native, Louis Rosenberg began training as an architectural draftsman when he was just sixteen. He entered the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, graduating in 1914. Upon graduation he joined the faculty of the new school of architecture at the University of Oregon. Rosenberg enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917 upon America’s entry into the war. He was recruited as a member of the new Camouflage Corps, 40th Engineers, under Captain Aymar Embury, noted New York architect. Embury formed an 8-man team of professional artists to document the activities of the American Expeditionary Force in France. After the war, Rosenberg traveled through Europe and North Africa producing volumes of architectural sketches, notes and studies. Chance meetings introduced Rosenberg to the art of etching which he ultimately mastered, evolving from draftsman to fine artist. His years of work resulted in a body of exceptional architectural etchings and drypoints, earning Rosenberg praise as one of this country’s finest architectural artists and printmakers.
Louis C. Rosenberg, American, 1890-1983. Ontario Street Track Grading. Etching, 1928. Museum Purchase, SC6.2020.4
Abraham Rattner [American, 1895-1978]
Born in Poughkeepsie, New York, to Russian Jews who had fled antisemitism, Abraham Rattner grew up in a home where his artistic interests were encouraged. He began studies in architecture in 1912 at George Washington University, while also taking art courses at the Corcoran School of Art; art classes soon won over his architecture studies. World War I paused Rattner’s studies when he was sent to France with the U.S. Army as a camouflage artist serving under Homer Saint-Gaudens, son of sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens. In France, Rattner was promoted to sergeant, put in charge of camouflage research, and served at the front in the crucial Second Battle of the Marne, seeing action at Château-Thierry, Belleau Wood, and on the Hindenberg Line. A shell blast near Château-Thierry knocked Rattner into a hole causing a back injury that troubled him for the remainder of his life.
Rattner continued his studies after the war at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, earning the Cresson scholarship to study art in Europe. After travels across Europe, Rattner and his wife settled in Paris, making it their home for two decades. In Paris, among ex-patriots and post-war culture, he was exposed to Futurism, Cubism, and Expressionism all of which he experimented with in his work. As World War II approached, Rattner and his wife returned to the U.S. where his work began to reflect the atrocities of World War II and the Holocaust. In later years he worked with mosaics, tapestry and stained-glass, and in work that was increasingly spiritual and self-reflective with a focus on his Jewish faith and social change. An exceptional work from this era is Rattner’s stained glass window, Let There Be Light, on the interior east wall of the Chicago Loop Synagogue, commissioned by the synagogue’s architects in 1958 and completed in 1960.
Kerr Eby [American, 1890-1946]
Born to Canadian missionaries in Tokyo, Kerr Eby studied art in New York at the Art Student League and the Pratt Institute. He enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1917 after the U.S. had entered the first world war. Eby, unable to secure a commission as a combat artist, instead served as an ambulance driver and camoufleur in France. Working near the front, he witnessed first-hand the ravages of battle. A skilled draftsman, Eby recorded the lives of soldiers at war beginning a body of work in prints and drawings that would ultimately be published in his book, WAR.
In 1941, Eby attempted to reenlist when the U.S. entered World War II but was rejected due to his age. He was, however, able to serve as a combat artist via a privately funded program in coordination with the Army’s Office of the Surgeon General. When in 1943 Congress ceased funding the War Art Unit program which had been established under the Corps of Engineers to document the war in art, Abbott Laboratories, a large medical supply company, commissioned twelve artists to record the work of the Army Medical Corps. Eby operated primarily in the Pacific during World War II, where he landed with the Marines on Tarawa and Guadalcanal. While side by side with soldiers in foxholes, covering the war on Bougainville Island, New Guinea, Eby was not wounded but became ill with a tropical disease from which he never fully recovered. He died at his home in Norwalk, Connecticut in 1946 from complications of this illness. His combat artwork provides a historical record and primary documentation of the American experience of war in the 20th century.
Click here to see an interview describing the Ghost Army exhibit while it was on display at FWMoA! To see works from our permanent collection in person, plan your next visit!
References:
Behrens, Roy R.; C A M O U P E D I A: A blog for clarifying and continuing the findings that were published in Camoupedia: A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage, by Roy R. Behrens (Bobolink Books, 2009). https://camoupedia.blogspot.com/search/label/American%20Camouflage%20Corps
Embury II, Aymar; Reminiscences of a Camouflage Officer, The Military Engineer, Vol. 19, No. 105 (MAY-JUNE, 1927). https://www.jstor.org/stable/44691344
Davis Jr., Harry A.; Experiences of a Soldier Artist: a narrative of events of the three years that I spent overseas, January 22, 1946. https://exhibits.library.indianapolis.iu.edu/sc001/items/show/18.
Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis Library, Special Collections at University Library;Top of FormBottom of Form The Artist in Peace and War: Harry Davis in Italy 1938-1945. https://exhibits.library.indianapolis.iu.edu/sc001/exhibits/show/harrydavis
National Park Service, Saint-Gaudens National Historical Park; The War of Deception: Artists and Camouflage in World War I. https://www.nps.gov/articles/the-war-of-deception.htm
Parkinson, E. Malcolm; Prologue Magazine, Spring 2012, Vol. 44, No. 1, The Artist at War, Painters, Muralists, Sculptors, Architects Worked to Provide Camouflage for Troops in World War I. https://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2012/spring/camouflage.html
Smithsonian Archives of American Art; Oral history interview with Garo Zareh Antreasian, 1974 March 29. https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/interviews/oral-history-interview-garo-zareh-antreasian-12785.
U.S. Army Center of Military History; History of the U.S. Army Combat Artist Program. https://history.army.mil/Army-Museum-Enterprise/US-Army-Combat-Artist-Program/
Wikipedia; List of camoufleurs. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_camoufleurs
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