Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks

Romaine Brooks (born Beatrice Romaine Goddard ; born May 1, 1874 in Rome , Italy , † December 7, 1970 in Nice , France ) was an American painter and sculptor .

Life

Romaine Brooks was born as Beatrice Romaine Goddard, the third child to wealthy parents Ella Mary Waterman and Major Henry Goddard. She grew up in Philadelphia . The father left the family shortly after their birth and the mother was rather disinterested in Romaine. She preferred her older, mentally handicapped brother, St. Mar, and left her in charge of him as a young girl. When Romaine was twelve, the proper education to be a wife began. For this purpose, her grandfather sent her to various European boarding schools. After graduation, however, she emancipated herself from the family and obtained a small severance payment with the help of a lawyer. She stayed in Europe and spent most of her life there. Brooks began studying classical singing in Paris in 1896 , but only two years later she recognized her true calling - painting . She began in Rome with a free day course at the Scuola Nazionale and took additional evening courses at the Circolo Artistico .

When Romaines mother died in 1902, Brooks inherited the entire family fortune, which from then on allowed her to work as an independent artist unhindered by sales successes. She now spent her summers frequently in Capri , where she met the highly regarded but destitute gay pianist John Ellingham Brooks. The two married and settled in London. That's how Brooks got into higher society. Here she also had her name changed to Romaine Brooks. In 1905 Romaine took an apartment in Paris and from now on - like other women in art - immersed himself in the local world of intellectuals, artists and same-sex people. There she also met her future model, the Russian dancer Ida Rubinstein , with whom she had a three-year relationship. Brooks' first exhibitions in Paris and London from 1910 onwards gave her a reputation as an outstanding portraitist . She was happy to hire her wealthy contemporaries and prominent circle of friends. She painted Jean Cocteau and Gabriele D'Annunzio, among others . She had a lifelong friendship with the latter.

In 1915 Romaine met the most important person in her subsequent life: Natalie Clifford Barney , who ran a literary salon in Paris . Natalie not only provided her with exclusive models for portrait painting, but was also with her for almost fifty years. In 1925 Brooks had reached the zenith of her career with three exhibitions in Paris, London and New York City at the same time. Nevertheless, she fell into severe depression in the early 1930s, as she did not get the recognition for her work that she wanted. She began to work through her childhood memories in more than 100 pencil and ink drawings . For this she returned to Philadelphia until the beginning of the Second World War . In 1940 Brooks and Natalie's house in the south of France burned down . As a result, Brooks, who was increasingly conservative and who increasingly sympathized with Italian fascism , chose Italy as her new home and bought the small villa Saint 'Agnes in Fiesole near Florence .

After the end of the war, Romaine isolated herself more and more from society. She withdrew and lived almost completely cut off from the outside world. In 1967 she moved to Nice in the south of France. Her love affair with Natalie broke up in 1969 when she confessed to an affair of more than seven years. Brooks then irrevocably ceased communications with Natalie. Due to her aggressive eccentricity, she had no more social contacts until her death. Today Romaine Brooks is buried in the Cimetière de Passy cemetery in Paris. Much of her paintings now hangs in the National Museum of American Art in Washington, DC

Throughout her life, the sought-after Romaine did not lack offers from women and men. Many famous lesbians of the time were impressed by her. Among them the writer Bryher and the designer Eileen Gray . Brooks also had several affairs, including with pianist Renata Borgatti in 1918 and with Toupie Lowther in the 1920s .

style

Romaine Brooks is best known for her sensitive, androgynous and self-confident portraits of women, but she also made nudes , numerous pencil and ink drawings, and book illustrations. Her enormous empathy and revelation was always valued in her portraits. Because of her preference for dark colors, she is known as the “master of gray”. James McNeill Whistler is regarded as her artistic role model .

Works (selection)

• The Black Cap . 1907.
• Portrait de la Contesse Anna de Noailles . 1908.
• White azaleas . 1910.
• The cross of France . 1914.
• L'Amazone . 1915.
• Renata Borgatti at the piano . 1920.
• Self-portrait , 1923
• Peter, a young English girl . 1923–1924 (portrait of the artist Hannah Gluck 1874–1970).
• The Impeders . 1930.

literature

Essays

• Catherine M. Chastain: Romaine Brooks. A new look at her drawings . In: Woman's Art Journal , Vol. 17 (2001/02), Issue 2, pp. 2-14, ISSN  0270-7993 .
• Michael Duncan: Our Miss Brooks . In: Art in America , Vol. 90 (2002), Issue 3, ISSN  0004-3214 .
• Bridget Elliott, Jo-Ann Wallace: “Fleur du mal” or “Second-Hand Roses”? Natalie Barney, Romaine Brooks, and the "Originality of the Avant-Garde" . In: Feminist Review , 40 : 6-30 (1992), ISSN  1618-7628 .
• Tirza T. Latimer: Romaine Brooks and the Future of Sapphic modernity . In: Laura Doan, Jane Garrity (Eds.): Sapphic Modernities. Sexuality, women and English culture . Palgrave Macmillan, New York 2006, pp. 35-54, ISBN 1-4039-6498-X .
• Joe Lucchesi: Something hidden, secret, and eternal. Romaine Brooks, Radclyffe Hall, and the Lesbian Image in "The Forge . " In: Whitney Chadwick, Tirza T. Latimer: The modern woman revisited . University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 2003, pp. 169-179, ISBN 0-8135-3292-2 .
• Nancy Kuhl: Intimate Circles. American Women in the Arts. Catalog book with essays. Yale University Press , New Haven 2007 ISBN 0300134029 (including a chapter on Brooks; in English)

Monographs.

• Whitney Chastain: Amazons in the Drawing Room. The art of Romaine Brooks . University Press, Berkeley, Calif. 2000, ISBN 0-520-22567-8 .
• Tirza T. Latimer: Women together, women apart. Portraits of Lesbian Paris . University Press, New Brunswick, NJ 2005, ISBN 0-8135-3595-6 .
• Meryle Secrest : Between Me and Life. A Biography of Romaine Brooks . Doubleday, Garden City, NY 1974, ISBN 0-385-03469-5 .
• Diana Souhami: Wild Girls, Paris, Sappho and Art. The love life of Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks . Phoenix Publ., London 2005, ISBN 0-7538-1977-5 .
• Andrea Weiss and Susanne Goerdt: Paris was a woman. Die Frauen von der Left Bank (Paris was woman. Portraits from the Left Bank, 1995). Rowohlt Verlag, Reinbek 2006, ISBN 3-4992-4224-9 .

documentary

• Greta Schiller (Director): Paris Was a Woman . 1996.

Web links

• Romaine Brooks. In: FemBio. Women's biography research (with references and citations).
• detailed biography of Romaine Brooks on lespress .com
• Short biography and book recommendation on Romaine Brooks