1920s Frederick A. Paula "Galleon at Sea" Nautical Seascape Oil Painting on Board, Framed

Description

The romance of the high seas gloriously summoned. Measures 43 1/4" x 48 1/2".


Frederick Pawla (1876-1964)

Frederick Alexander Pawla … more The romance of the high seas gloriously summoned. Measures 43 1/4" x 48 1/2".


Frederick Pawla (1876-1964)

Frederick Alexander Pawla was active/lived in England, Australia, New York, Florida, and California. He is known for marine painting, murals and camouflage.

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.

Pawla’s surname rhymes with Paula and is easily misspelled. Most likely that’s one of the reasons why his substantial contributions to World War I ship camouflage are rarely acknowledged. According to one source, Pawla was a “highly important” marine camoufleur for the US during World War I, but is now “largely forgotten.” There are US government documents in 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 mistakenly listed as Paula.

His wartime contributions to camouflage service are confirmed by a 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.”

In 1921, US Assistant Secretary of War Benedict Crowell openly applauded Pawla’s camouflage efforts, in a published overview of the war. Crowell 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). It was Pawla who was placed in charge of ship camouflage for the AEF Embarkation Service.

This means that Pawla oversaw the camouflage of “many of the army transports, particularly cargo carriers,” and was, according to Crowell, “one of the most valuable men in the government for this sort of work.” Aryeh Wetherhorn has said that Pawla’s duties “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.”

It has also been confirmed that he not only supervised the painting of camouflage schemes on ships, but that he himself designed some of the patterns. As proof, a 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 Pawla’s name is clearly written on several of those.

Based on online news accounts, 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 being “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 cited as being responsible for the cyclorama.

Pawla’s other artwork was somewhat less 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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Sources

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

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

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.

“Mural Artist in Tampa to Open Studio: Was in Camouflage Department” in The Tampa Tribune (Tampa FL) November 3, 1922, p. 7.

“Pawla Paintings on Exhibit Soon at Burlingame Hi” in San Mateo Times (San Mateo CA), April 20, 1934.

Rawson, Laura. “Famed Marine Artist Frederick Pawla Now Living in Santa Cruz “ in Santa Cruz Sentinel-News, November 7, 1952, p. 2.

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

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Written and submitted by Roy R. Behrens, author of False Colors: Art, Design and Modern Camouflage; Camoupedia; A Compendium of Research on Art, Architecture and Camouflage; Ship Shape: A Dazzle Camouflage Sourcebook; and other books. less