In the years after World War II, Beau's Navy work continued at a surprisingly rapid pace. In late 1945, he took three cruises at sea aboard the battleship USS Iowa, the heavy cruiser USS Los Angeles, and the new super-carrier, the USS Midway. As always, he loved sketching on-board scenes and painting the ship portraits during the fleet maneuvers, and while keeping up to date on the Navy’s latest technological advances.
In July of 1946, Beau was designated as the Navy’s Official Task Force Artist for "Operation Crossroads", the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. From the bridge of the flagship, the USS Fall River, Beau witnessed and recorded the amazing spectacle of the two blasts from the Able and Baker bombs. The day after the Able bomb test, he set his easel up on a large buoy while working on a plein air watercolor sketch of the old battleship USS Arkansas. So close was he to the damaged and burning ship, that he had unwittingly exposed himself to a high level of radioactivity. When he returned to the flagship that evening he wrote, “I was ordered to dispose of all my garments and have a thorough scrubbing down!” to counter the effects of the overdose of radiation. The scrubbing down was painful and successful, and luckily Beau did not suffer from radiation sickness, although the Navy doctors continued to closely monitor his health for two years. While on location at Bikini, Beau made over 180 on-the-spot sketches, both in pencil and watercolor, plus 16 refined studio paintings that he created in his studio aboard the flagship. Two of the paintings depicted the now famous atomic mushroom clouds, while another captured the particularly dramatic sinking at night of the famed aircraft carrier, USS Saratoga. In the months that followed, the Bikini paintings would be exhibited in Beau’s second one man show at the Andrew Mellon West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Subsequently the show traveled to the Museum of the Science and Industry in Chicago. The public interest in these paintings was extreme and attendance exceeded 700,000, by far the largest audience of Beau’s career.
In July of 1946, Beau was designated as the Navy’s Official Task Force Artist for "Operation Crossroads", the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the South Pacific. From the bridge of the flagship, the USS Fall River, Beau witnessed and recorded the amazing spectacle of the two blasts from the Able and Baker bombs. The day after the Able bomb test, he set his easel up on a large buoy while working on a plein air watercolor sketch of the old battleship USS Arkansas. So close was he to the damaged and burning ship, that he had unwittingly exposed himself to a high level of radioactivity. When he returned to the flagship that evening he wrote, “I was ordered to dispose of all my garments and have a thorough scrubbing down!” to counter the effects of the overdose of radiation. The scrubbing down was painful and successful, and luckily Beau did not suffer from radiation sickness, although the Navy doctors continued to closely monitor his health for two years. While on location at Bikini, Beau made over 180 on-the-spot sketches, both in pencil and watercolor, plus 16 refined studio paintings that he created in his studio aboard the flagship. Two of the paintings depicted the now famous atomic mushroom clouds, while another captured the particularly dramatic sinking at night of the famed aircraft carrier, USS Saratoga. In the months that followed, the Bikini paintings would be exhibited in Beau’s second one man show at the Andrew Mellon West Building of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Subsequently the show traveled to the Museum of the Science and Industry in Chicago. The public interest in these paintings was extreme and attendance exceeded 700,000, by far the largest audience of Beau’s career.