1. In the First World War, the French army formed a camouflage corps, led by Lucien- Victor Guirand de Scévola, employing artists known as camoufleurs to create schemes such as tree observation posts and covers for guns. Other armies soon followed them. The English zoologist John Graham Kerr and the American artist Abbott Thayer led attempts to introduce scientific principles of countershading and disruptive patterning into military camouflage, with limited success. CAMOUFLAGE Iron observation post camouflaged as a tree by Cubist painter André Mare, 1916

2. The Cubist vocabulary itself was adapted and modified by the Royal Navy during "the Great War." The Cubists aimed to revolutionize painting - and reinvented the art of camouflage on the way.

3. British marine painter Norman Wilkinson invented the concept of "dazzle painting" - a way of using stripes and disrupted lines to confuse the enemy about the speed and dimensions of a ship.