Bois de la Brigade de Marine, Belleau Wood

This map of Bois de la Brigade de Marine was commissioned by Edward Robinson, Director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, to honor the Marines at Belleau Wood and his son. Phillips B. Robinson served with the British Ambulance Service in 1914 and was commissioned into the Marine Corps in 1917. His years abroad and fluency in French and German earned him special assignments with the Quartermaster Department. While assigned to Marine Corps Headquarters in Washington, D.C., he was killed in an automobile accident in late 1918. Artist Barry Faulkner, having served in France with the Army, returned to sketch the area around Belleau Wood. He used aerial maps and his own drawings to create this map with four small paintings at the bottom edge of the work.

About the artist: Barry Faulkner was a noted muralist and studied at the American Academy in Rome, Italy. He was a member of the National Academy of Design. When America declared war in 1917, Faulkner, an advocate of the use of camouflage, enlisted in Company A, 40th Regiment, Corps of Engineers, and spent the next two years in France. By the end of the war, Company A had proven the effectiveness of the strategic use of camouflage.