The U.S. entry into World War I is remembered as a catalyst for domestic activism. American visual artists notably participated, using their talents in a few different ways. Some of their efforts are widely known, such as the iconic poster campaigns featuring Uncle Sam by James Montgomery Flagg; or sculptors with the Army’s 40th Corps of Engineers creating camouflage to hide troops from airplanes and employing baffle painting to obscure boats from submarines. A lesser-known group of artist volunteers found ways to use their creative talents in New York. Called Art War Relief, members from a group of art societies formed a coalition under the auspices of the American Red Cross.
On the homefront, Red Cross chapters grew from a few hundred in the beginning of 1917 to over 3000 by the end of 1919. Chaired by Mrs. Ripley Hitchcock, Art War Relief was auxiliary 282 of the New York County Chapter. The committee consisted of women representatives from 30 organizations, such as the Art Students League, the National Sculpture Society, the National Academy of Design, and the Decorators Association of New York. The group coordinated book drives, gathered clothing for refugee children in the Allied countries, and ran re-education programs for returning soldiers.
Active in this group was Edith Marion Day Magonigle. A muralist who often collaborated with her architect husband, Harold Van Buren Magonigle, she served as the chair of Art War Relief’s Painting Committee. At the time of her selection, Magonigle had already communicated with YMCA’s Camp Upton in Long Island, donating stage sets for one-act plays early in 1918. Officially beginning her chairmanship in February, Edith Magonigle guided artist-volunteers in the creation of landscape targets for use in training camps, and coordinated their dispersal across the United States. Edith Magongle’s files on the Art War Relief, included within her husband’s papers, document this critical work.
By the time the U.S. entered World War I, it had been decades since the nation was involved in a large scale conflict. Suddenly, troops needed to be recruited, mobilized, and trained. Landscape (or designation) targets had been used in Europe to educate artillery officers in range-finding. A fairly recent development in military classroom instruction at the time, the demonstrator would use the landscape paintings to teach students how to refer to points in the field. Art War Relief’s canvases depicted typical French countrysides, to best help the cadets visualize what they might encounter abroad. The students were trained how to quickly discern and describe a target, using the clock-face method, mils or finger-widths - different means of using landscape features and measures to describe a target’s location. The purpose of this training was to standardize vocabulary, so that the combat troops could quickly and clearly communicate in the field.