Romaine Brooks:
“At that particular moment my plans for living the life of an artist were of necessity, pushed aside by the immediate urge for freedom…”
When Brooks was finally celebrated in the Art world , she was in her 90s and mostly forgotten, even in Paris, where she’d spent much of her life.
For many queer artists, their sexuality had insignificant impact or reflection on their work, but Brooks was a lesbian, and her gayness permeated virtually every aspect of her life and her work. She dressed as a man, she painted portraits of mostly women, many nude. Yet in June 1903, she married her friend John Ellingham Brooks, an unsuccessful pianist who was broke. He was gay. She may have been motivated by concern for him and a desire for companionship, rather than a “Lavender Marriage” (a male-female marriage where one or both partners were gay). They began fighting almost as soon as they were married when she cut her hair and chose to wear men’s clothes; he refused to be seen in public with her dressed that way. Not wanting any part of his outward propriety, she left him after only a year. He frightened her when he kept making references to “our” money.
Brooks was born Beatrice Romaine Goddard, in Rome, to a wealthy American family. She had a difficult, even tragic childhood. Her father deserted the family when she was four-years-old. She grew up in New York City, abused by her mother, who gave all her attention to her mentally ill son. Eventually, Romaine was put in foster care with a less well-off family. Then her Mother stopped her support payments, causing her foster family to sink into poverty. Even though her maternal grandfather was a millionaire, Romaine refused to contact him for fear of being sent back to her mother. Her foster parents eventually located her grandfather on their own, and she ended up in a boarding school.
After graduation, Romaine received enough of her family money to move to Paris where she found work as singer in a cabaret. Later, she went to Rome to study art, the only woman in her life drawing class. Not surprisingly, she was a victim of sexual harassment, which ended when she beat the shit out of her tormentor and was expelled from the school. Always short of money, Romaine returned to Paris for more art studies, and went back to singing in cabarets.
In 1901, after the death of her mother and brother, Romaine inherited her grandfather’s considerable estate. Independently wealthy, she was suddenly attractive to all sorts of people. Disposing of the husband, yet for some reason, keeping his name, Brooks rented a studio in the small English coastal town of St. Ives where she gave up her more colorful palette for shades of gray. Having no need to sell her work, she had no reason to pay attention to the modernist movement of the first decades of the 20th century.
In Paris, Brooks ignored the world of the avant-garde, her wealth allowing her to hang out with, and paint the upper-class and celebrities of the era, many of whom she took as lovers. She had an exhibition of her work in 1910, and her reputation as a portrait artist grew along with her high society friendships.
She had a three-year affair with Russian dancer, Ida Rubenstein, who performed with Sergei Diaghilev‘s Ballets Russe. She painted Rubenstein more often than any other model.
Rubenstein by Brooks, 1917, Smithsonian, public domain
Brooks then moved on to Natalie Clifford Barney. They built a house with two separate wings joined by a dining room to accommodate their need to be together, yet separate. Though frequently apart, their “arrangement” lasted more than 50 years. Brook’s list of paintings from this period might also be used as her list of lovers as well.
Barney and Brooks, 1915, photographer unknown, public domain
Her short hair and masculine attire became fashionable in Paris. In her 30s and 40s, her whole social life in Paris and London was immersed in the emerging lesbian culture. Her works reflect that.
From 1920 to 1924, most of Brooks’ subjects were women who were in Barney’s social circle or who visited her salon. Truman Capote visited Brooks’ studio in the late 1940s, and he called it:
“…the all-time ultimate gallery of all the famous dykes from 1880 to 1935 or thereabouts.”
Self-portrait; Au bord de la Mer; 1914, public domain
By the start of Word War II, Brooks was mostly forgotten. It wasn’t until the 21st century that Brooks’ art came to symbolize the openness and sexual freedom that only her independent wealth would allow one-hundred years earlier.
The rediscovery of Brooks in the past two decades was part of the new focus on gender and sexuality, and greater interest in and tolerance for artists who worked with LGBTQ themes. Brooks’ self-portrait from 1923 was one of the more arresting works and provided the poster at the National Portrait Gallery’s exhibition of LGBTQ themes in portraiture, the fabulous 2010 Hide/Seek show, which was censored by the head of The Smithsonian, Wayne Clough.
Several surprising paintings and photographs of female nudes by Brooks, kept in France, and never seen in the USA until 2010, showed that she was much more than a talented portraitist. Brooks’ drawings add dash and wit to an artist known largely for her somber work. For me, Brooks’ art is at least as interesting as her life.
Brooks spent much of her life on the island of Capri, which had become a sort of haven for queer Anglo-American expatriates fearing a backlash after poor Oscar Wilde‘s 1895 trial and conviction for sodomy. Romaine and Barney spent the war years in Italy.
Brooks was staunchly anti-Communist. She had Jewish friends and lovers. Her former lover Rubinstein was Jewish and Brooks was quite aware of American prejudices against Jews. Barney was part Jewish and in constant danger. Brooks did everything she could to protect her from the European Fascists and Nazis. At first, she and Barney felt that Italy would never get involved in the war and they would be safe there.
She helped save many Jewish lives at the risk of her own. She protected art historian and collector, Bernard Berenson, from the Nazis during the war. After the war ended, Brooks returned to Capri and declined to move back to Paris with Barney.
She became increasingly reclusive. By the mid-1950s, she was living in a Capri hotel, spending weeks at a time in a dark room, believing she was losing her eyesight. She became paranoid, afraid that someone would steal her work and kill her.
In the last year of her life, she stopped communicating with Barney, leaving letters unanswered and refusing to open the door when Barney tried to visit.
She died alone in Nice in 1970. gone at 96 years old. Brooks, who was highly conscious of the importance of fashion as a social statement, described her work as “a sign of the age which may amuse some future feminists“. Indeed, it has. Her unpublished memoir is titled: No Pleasant Memories.
