Robert Lawson (October 4, 1892 – May 27, 1957) was an American author and illustrator of children's books, some of which are widely known. During World War I, he also served as a camouflage artist.

Background

Born in New York City, Lawson spent his early life in Montclair, New Jersey. Following high school, he studied art for three years under illustrator Howard Giles (an advocate of dynamic symmetry as conceived by Jay Hambidge) at the New York School of Fine and Applied Art (now Parsons College). His career as an illustrator began in 1914, when his illustration for a poem about the invasion of Belgium was published in Harper's Weekly. He went on to publish in other magazines, including the Ladies Home Journal, Everybody's Magazine and the Century Magazine.

Camouflage service

It is not widely known that, during World War I, Lawson was a member of the first U.S. Army camouflage unit (called the American Camouflage Corps), in connection with which he served in France with other artists, such as Barry Faulkner, Sherry Edmundson Fry, William Twigg-Smith and Kerr Eby (Behrens 2009). In his autobiography, Faulkner recalls that Lawson had a remarkable "sense of fantasy and humor", which made him especially valuable when the camoufleurs put on musical shows for the children of the French women who worked with them on camouflage (Faulkner 1957).