Drawing upon the collection of the Provincial Museum, artist Sara Graham presents a recreation of the office of Patrick Delaney, Level Systems Officer. The five paintings, she proposes, are the only remaining works completed by Delaney while he was employed by Newfoundland’s Department of Lighthouses in the period 1924-1925:

Born April 18, 1899 in St. John’s, throughout his childhood, Delaney had an interest in art and design and began attending the Victoria School of Art and Design, later known as Nova Scotia College of Art Design, in Halifax, in 1918. In March 1917, Arthur Lismer, the school’s principal, had initiated a class in design to train individuals as graphic designers. Aware of Lismer’s endeavours and reputation, Delaney went to study under this well-known artist.

In 1918, Lismer exhibited Halifax Harbour–Time of War (c. 1917), a painting of “dazzle ships” in the Halifax Harbour. British marine artist Norman Wilkinson coined the term “dazzle painting” in 1917, referring to the World War I experiment in artistic camouflage and painted confusion that used strongly contrasting colors to break up the lines of a ship making it difficult for a U-boat to judge the true course of a target. Intrigued with the camouflage design he encountered for the first time in Lismer’s work, Delaney went to New York in 1919 to see the colourful ships where it is thought he likely viewed the Aquitania, a merchant ship that had been converted into a hospital ship during the war. What fascinated Delaney was the notion that the camouflage did not make the ships invisible, but rather gave the ships a heightened visibility.

While a student at the Victoria School of Art, Delaney eagerly embraced the new range of painting theories and styles that he had learned of from journals, professors, and from students who had travelled to Europe after the war. Delaney anxiously wanted to visit Europe and become part of the new avant-garde art movement, De Stijl, which advocated pure abstraction through a reduction of form and colour. Despite his desire to join the vanguard of painting in Rotterdam, after graduating in 1922, he found it necessary to find work in St. John’s where he would apply his recently acquired skills to a position at Ayre & Marshall Sign Co. When a position for a Level Systems Officer was posted with the Department of Lighthouses in December 1923, Delaney sought the opportunity to pursue larger scale designs. At the time, the Department of Lighthouses was a subsidiary of the Department of Marine and Fisheries and the Level Systems Officer was responsible for the exterior designs of the Lighthouses. Delaney was hired in 1924.

Although the unique dazzle design disappeared from use on ships post-war, still influenced with the patterns, as Level Systems Officer, Delaney resurrected the visual approach, basing his colour choices for lighthouses on the palettes he had observed earlier. In a two year period, Delaney designed over 50 “dazzle-influenced” designs for new lighthouses, convinced that not only would the lighthouses be more visible, but would also be easily distinguishable from each other. A radical break from the traditional colours and patterns of marine protocol, however, the Department did not adopt any of his designs. After much frustration with the department’s unwillingness to implement his plans, Delaney left the department in January 1926.