William Mackay William Andrew Mackay ( 1876 - July 26 , 1939 ) was an American artist who created a series of murals about the achievements of Theodore Roosevelt . Those three murals , completed in 1936 , were installed beneath the rotunda in the Roosevelt Memorial Hall of the American Museum of Natural History in New York . Less known but also important , he was a major contributor to the development of ship camouflage during World War I . Background . As described in a " New York Times " obituary ( July 28 , 1939 , p . 11 ) , Mackay was born in Philadelphia to Frank F . and Elizabeth J . Mackay . After high school , he studied at the City College of New York , the Académie Julian in Paris , and the American Academy in Rome . As a muralist , he completed projects for the Library of Congress , the American Museum of Natural History , the Minnesota State House of Representatives , and other locations . Ship Camouflage . Mackay played a major role in the development of U . S . ship camouflage during World War I , although there are conflicting accounts of the extent of his contributions . According to one report , he experimented with low visibility ship camouflage as early as 1913 ( Perry 1919 , pp . 138 – 139 ) . In that source , he is said to have painted a vessel with red , green and violet splotches ( not unlike a Pointillist painting ) , with the result that , when viewed from a distance , the ship appeared “ to melt into sea and sky , ” making it less visible than if it had been painted with a flat “ battleship gray , ” as had been the earlier practice . A later account describes Mackay ’ s testimony in 1917 at a meeting of the U . S . Navy Consulting Board in Washington D . C . ( Crowell 1921 , p . 496 ) . In that presentation , he used a toy - like spinning device to demonstrate the visual effects of one or more rotating colored disks ( comparable to Maxwell ’ s disks ) . One of these disks had been painted with equal components of red , violet and green , while another had green and violet sectors . When the disks were spun , the former appeared as an indistinct gray , while the second produced the appearance of a color described as “ the blue of sea water . ” On the basis of these demonstrations , Mackay argued ( as he had in 1913 ) that low visibility hues could result when red , green and violet colors were viewed from a sufficient distance . After the U . S . entered World War I in 1917 , a scheme devised by Mackay was one of five camouflage “ measures ” approved by the U . S . Navy Consulting Board for official use on merchant ships . His proposal was subsequently patented in 1919 , as U . S . Patent No . 1 , 305 , 296 , titled “ Process of Rendering Objects Less Visible Against Backgrounds . ” During World War I , he also served as the head of the camouflage section of the New York District of the Emergency Fleet Corporation , for which he supervised the artists who applied camouflage patterns to merchant ships in that district ’ s harbors ( Warner 1919 ) . One of the artists who worked with Mackay during World War I was John D . Whiting , who wrote a semi - fictional book about his own wartime experiences ( Whiting 1928 ) , in which it is said that Mackay started a camouflage training school , and published a " Handbook on Ship Camouflage " in 1937 .