Romaine Brooks
Encyclopedia : R : RO : ROM : Romaine Brooks
Romaine Brooks [link] [link] (May 1, 1874 – December 7, 1970) was a bisexual painter of the Symbolist school.
She was born Beatrice Romaine Goddard in Rome, Italy, to American parents who soon returned to the United States.
Early Life and Relationships
After reaching adulthood, she spent most of her life in Paris, France. Brooks was bisexual, but described as primarily lesbian [link].
From 1903 to 1904, she was briefly married to pianist John Ellington Brooks (also a bisexual). The marriage was an open one, with both taking lovers during that period. After her marriage failed, she had sexual relationships with some men during this time, including Oscar Wilde's lover Lord Alfred Douglas, and with the writer and politician Gabriele D'Annunzio, among others. Her female lovers included ballet dancer Ida Rubinstein and concert pianist Renata Borgatti, wealthy socialite Luisa Casati, writers Djuna Barnes, Radclyffe Hall and Nancy Cunard, and Venice Baroness Mimì Franchetti. Rubinstein became the inspiration for some of her better known works, in one depicted as Venus (mythology). [link]
Her relationships with Ida Rubenstein and Gabriele D'Annunzio, in particular, resulted in paintings which are among her best-known works.
Relationship with Natalie Barney
The most important relationship of her life was her fifty-year love affair with the lesbian writer and salonist Natalie Clifford Barney, whom she met in 1915. Neither she nor Barney were completely faithful (her affairs with Renata Borgatti, Radclyffe Hall, Mimì Franchetti, Luisa Casati, and Djuna Barnes were all after her relationship with Barney began), but both remained devoted to one another throughout the relationship.
Career
Rubenstein was the model for the painting La France Croissée (The Cross Of France) (1914). The painting was reproduced in a special brochure, accompanied by a poem by D'Annunzio, and sold to raise money for the Red Cross and other organizations involved in the effort to win World War 1.
Brooks later received the Cross of the Legion of Honour in recognition of the service her art had been to France. Rubenstein was also the subject of several other works including a portrait named for her, and The Masked Archer, which portrays her in character as the lead actor in D'Annunzio's production of his play Le Martyre de Saint Sébastien (The Martyrdom of Saint Sebastian), which he wrote for Rubenstein. Her two paintings of D'Annunzio are undoubtedly the best-known portraits of the writer. Her other portrait subjects include Jean Cocteau, Duke Uberto Strozzi, and Carl Van Vechten.
Romaine Brooks is one of the notable female artists that constituted the Parisian "Left Bank" scene in the 1920s. She painted many portraits of other women who are also associated with this period: Una Troubridge, the partner of Radclyffe Hall, Renata Borgatti, The Marchesa Luisa Casati, Baroness Emile d'Erlanger, Muriel Draper and Barney.
In her best known self-portrait she is dressed in riding coat, gloves and hat. The painting is a somber study in greys and blacks, as are many of her works; almost monotone, except for the red focal point of The Cross of the Legion of Honour pinned to her lapel. In later life, although never published, she write her memoirs, "No Pleasant Memories", written during the most reclusive phase of her life, after she and Barney ended their relationship.
External links
From Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Original article here. Support Wikipedia by contributing or donating.
All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License See Wikipedia Copyrights for details.