Master of disguise, even in one of his own oil paintings
The master of camouflage, Joseph Gray, even managed to hide himself in one of his first but most famous paintings.
Hooded and almost lost in the top right corner, he appears in “A Ration Party of the 4th Black Watch at the Battle of Neuve Chapelle, 1915”.
It shows the soldiers running for cover after delivering rations to their comrade. As author Mary Horlock describes them “ragged spectres...half sunk in mud, half lost in shadow.”
As Gray did throughout his career as a artist, he portrayed the men who had been at the scene, asking them to model for his paintings (or if they had been killed in combat, using photographs). Since he was there, he included himself, although typically, almost completely concealed.
After realising his artistic skills, an awareness of colour, light and shade, made him an expert in camouflage. By 1936 he had completed a comprehensive report, Camouflage and Air Defence.
Such was his expertise, the War Office recruited him as a Major in the Royal Engineers and he was tasked with helping hide vital military targets. Mary said: “He had seen large covers used on the battlefields and wanted to work out how to make them fit for big buildings and cities.
“He went round hardware stores trying all sorts of materials and hit on the idea of using steel wool.
“It could be stretched and painted and rolled out quickly to hide factories or gas works that the Luftwaffe would try to bomb.
“He even talked about giant covers that could be dropped from aircraft. While some of the ideas were very extreme, many were so practical.
“If something couldn’t be hidden completely, the thinking was to bamboozle the enemy as much as possible.”