The Theories of Abbott H. Thayer: Father of Camouflage Author(S): Roy R
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The Theories of Abbott H. Thayer: Father of Camouflage Author(s): Roy R. Behrens Source: Leonardo, Vol. 21, No. 3 (1988), pp. 291-296 Published by: The MIT Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1578658 Accessed: 22-02-2018 00:30 UTC JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://about.jstor.org/terms The MIT Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Leonardo This content downloaded from 130.182.24.113 on Thu, 22 Feb 2018 00:30:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms The Theories of Abbott H. Thayer: Father of Camouflage Roy R. Behrens Abstract-Abbott H. Thayer (1849-1921), a prominent U.S. painter, was one of the first to describe in detail the function of protective coloration in nature. In military history, he frequently is credited with the first military applications of countershading and disruptive patterning, so that he was known among friends as 'the father of camouflage'. This essay is a brief review of Thayer's lifelong involvement in the study of both natural and military camouflage. When people see the camouflaged the seventeenth-century settlers of Brain- years in rural New Hampshire near uniforms forjungle warfare, or elaborate tree, Massachusetts. The son of a country Keene, at the foot of Mount Monadnock, concealments of installations, few doctor, Thayer spent most of his formative a region to which he later would return. realize that the technique for all this was 'pioneered' by a New England a _ g- 0- - artist in the woods of Dublin, New Hampshire. Nancy Douglas Bowditch [1] I. INTRODUCTION In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, Abbott H. Thayer was an important U.S. painter whose portraits and landscapes were frequently praised (Fig. 1) [2]. In addition, he was an exceptional teacher, and among his most prominent students were Rockwell Kent, Louis Agassiz Fuertes and the sons of William James, Alexander and William, Jr. [3]. It is less widely acknowledged that Thayer was both an artist and a scientist. In biology, he most often is remembered as one of the first to describe in detail the function of protective coloration in nature. In military history, many credit him with the first military applications of disruptive patterns or 'dazzle camouflage', so that he was known among friends as 'the father of camouflage'. This essay is a brief review of the lifelong involvement of Thayer in the study of visual concealment in natural and military camouflage. II. CHRONOLOGY Born in Boston in 1849, Abbott Handerson Thayer was a descendant of Roy R. Behrens (artist, writer, teacher), Com- munication Design, Art Academy of Cincinnati, Fig. 1. Abbott H. Thayer, Self Portrait, oil on plywood, 28 15/16 X 22 in, 1920. (National Eden Park, Cincinnati, OH 45202, U.S.A. Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution) During the time that this painting was made, Thayer Received 10 December 1986. was profoundly depressed, in part because of a lack of acclaim for his abundant ideas about natural and military camouflage. He died of a stroke in the following year. ? 1988 ISAST Pergamon Press pic. Printed in Great Britain. LEONARDO, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 291-296,1988 0024-094X/88 $3.00+0.00 This content downloaded from 130.182.24.113 on Thu, 22 Feb 2018 00:30:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms president of the Society of American Artists and worked with a handful of students. .__.. Two of the Thayers' children died in the early 1880s. This may have been one of the causes for the subsequent illness of Mrs. Thayer, who underwent mental and 4aZ < )' physical deterioration and died in a hospital in 1891. Thayer was shattered by his wife's illness, although he was somehow productive throughout. After her death, Fig. 2. In 1896, Thayer he married theirdescribed loyal and capable friend, the Fig. principle4. Mimicry involves a deceptiveof resemblance countershading (or Emmeline Thayer's Buckingham Beach, Law), and betweenby twowhich kinds of unrelated he organisms. For example, the walking leaf (Phyllium siccifolium), accounted for "the white undersides of animals". returned to southwestern New Hampshire an orthodopterous insect from Australia, has an to live [5]. uncanny resemblance to leaves. As a young man, he was an avid naturalist For the remainder of his life, although and a skilled hunter and trapper. He he actively painted and taught, Thayer Thayer's first formal description of experimented with taxidermy, and he was largely preoccupied with the study of countershading was published in the showed his interest in art initially in protective coloration, of which the most American journal of ornithology The making watercolor sketches of birds and notable consequence was the publication Auk in 1886 and, 2 years later, was other animals [4]. of an ambitious and controversial volume reprinted in the yearbook of the Smith- Thayer moved to Brooklyn in 1867, on Concealing Coloration in the Animal sonian Institution. In November 1896, he where he studied painting at the Brooklyn Kingdom, first published in 1909 [6]. appeared at a meeting of the American Art School and the National Academy of Thayer died in New Hampshire in Ornithologists Union, where he used Design. In 1875, having married Kate 1921. He was profoundly depressed at the models of camouflaged ducks to demon- Bloede, he moved to Paris with his wife, time, apparently because of the lack of strate countershading. In 1898, he lectured where he was a student for 4 years in the acceptance of his abundant ideas regarding on the same subject at major universities atelier of Jean-Leon Ger6me at the Ecole protective coloration and military camou- and museums in England, Norway and des Beaux-Arts. Thereafter, the Thayers flage [7]. Italy, installing in each of those places returned to New York, where he "permanent apparatus demonstrating the established his own studio, served as invisibility of a countershaded object" [11]. III. COUNTERSHADING - Later, in hopes of financing his book, Abbott Thayer's interest in protective he experimented with the theatrical coloration in nature may have begun applications in of countershading, for the 1892, at which time he realized that purpose there of which he invented (and is a functional reason for the white displayed in the town hall of Dublin, New undersides of animals [8]. As an artist, Hampshire) "a large wooden box wired Thayer had long been aware of the for fact operating two sets of electric lights to that two-dimensional renderings are made demonstrate the disappearing act of a to look three-dimensional by the technique small countershaded Venus de Milo. It of shading, in which highlights are was the delight of the school children to painted at the top of a figure, because press of the buttons and make her come and the overhead light of the sun. In a large go" [12]. number of animals, a system of inverted Among zoologists, the principle of shading occurs, in which the white-bellied countershading was not controversial, it body looks less round and less solid and, in fact, as Thayer eventually found, because the effects of the sunlight have his discovery had been anticipated in been canceled out or counteracted (Fig. 1886 by a British entomologist, Edward 2) [9]. B. Poulton, with whom he established a Today this is commonly known as friendship [13]. But certain corollaries of Thayer's Law or the principle of countershading were highly controversial, countershading. In the words of Hugh B.as was the combative and arrogant tone Cott, a British zoologist, "in counter- of virtually all of Thayer's proposals [14]. shading we have a system of coloration It was a contention of Thayer that the the exact opposite of that upon which an coloration of all animals has evolved in artist depends when painting a picture. such a way as to contribute to their low The artist, by skilful use of light and visibility. He did not agree with the common belief that some animal color- -- ---~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ shade, creates upon a flat surface the illusionary appearance of solidity: Nature, ation is designed to be seen quickly and Fig. 3. In countershading, the shading on an on the other hand, by the precise use ofeasily to assist in the process of finding a animal's body that normally would result from countershading, creates upon a rounded mate, fooling quarry or intimidating a the illumination of the overhead sun (top surface the illusionary appearance of predator. Whenever a species is seen diagram) is canceled out or counteracted by the flatness. The one makes something unreal readily, said Thayer, it is because it is animal's white undersides (center), so that the two effects combine to create the appearance of recognizable: the other makes something being observed 'out of context' (outside flatness (bottom). real unrecognizable" (Fig. 3) [10]. of its customary environment) or, within 292 Behrens, Abbott H. Thayer This content downloaded from 130.182.24.113 on Thu, 22 Feb 2018 00:30:55 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms Blending is largely dependent upon a relationship of extreme similarity (between -< :~"f~' the figure and its ground), while disruption is based on the opposite tack, that of an .' . ..... ";-. .......... .-'.: the figure itself).