Romaine Brooks (1874 - 1970)
The artist who defied contemporary convention in almost every way possible, dressing androgynously, painting in her own distinct style, and living in some of the world’s most interesting locations.
“My rebellion took the form of hating conventional." Romaine Brooks in her unpublished memoir, ‘No Pleasant Memories’
The painter Romaine Brooks’ life is so remarkable, it’s almost impossible to know where to start. In her 96 years she experienced extreme poverty and untold riches. She mixed in the bohemian circles of Belle Epoque Paris, spent time in New York, and in later years found a haven from WWII in Florence, Italy. She adopted an androgynous look before it became popular, challenged gender norms and worked outside of the painting styles adopted by contemporary artists.
Her long standing lover Natalie Barney would write:
“I fear no country’s ready yet … for our complexities.” Natalie Barney, ‘Love’s Comrades,’ 1920
Born Beatrice Romaine Goddard on 1st May 1874 to wealthy parents in a hotel room in Rome, Brooks would have a difficult childhood from the off. Her father would disappear soon after Brooks was born, leaving his three children in what Brooks would later describe as “a court ruled over by a crazy queen.” Brooks’ mother was emotionally abusive, reportedly favoring Brooks’ mentally ill brother, St Mar.
She would abandon Brooks at least three times in her childhood; once she left six-year-old Brooks with their New York laundress, Mrs Hickey. Another time she would send Brooks, now 13 years old to a convent in northern Italy. Then, aged 17, Brooks found herself sent to Mademoiselle Bertin’s Finishing School in Geneva.
Throughout all this, creating art would become a reliable source of joy and distraction for Brooks. In her memoir she recounts her earliest memories of creating art;
“My personal attendant was changed so often that she became anonymous and often absent. Soon I made my home in public corridors of the hotel. Finding some quiet corner I would retreat there to draw oats, trees, and other country things to ease no doubt, the sorrows of retrospection. These were my first drawings; I was about six years old at the time.”
However, Brooks’ mother found the papers and took them away, banning her daughter from doing any more drawings. Brooks’ instant reaction was to rebel and draw whenever and wherever she found the opportunity;
“Whenever I sketched, it was on the sly. Pencils and pads were quickly hidden when the jiggling of my mother’s chatelaine warned me of her approach.”
It’s impossible to know if Brooks was naturally talented or if her skills developed as a result of her obsession with drawing. It’s quite clear though that Brooks developed a remarkable ability that was noticed by many of those close to her. She noted that even when sketching during her lectures, she was never told off. In fact, her teachers would sometimes praise her and ask to see her copybooks.
In 1893, aged 19, and finally able to make her own decisions, Brooks left her family and with a small allowance forged her own path, living in Paris, Rome and Capri, where almost penniless, she experienced near starvation and a nervous breakdown. Not long after returning to New York in 1901 when her brother passed away, Brooks’ mother died from diabetes complications. Both Brooks and her sister inherited a huge estate, leaving them both independently wealthy.
Brooks’ newfound wealth imbued her with the freedom most artists can only dream of. Suddenly she was no longer limited in any way. As well as travelling widely, Brooks started to experiment with a more masculine appearance; around two decades before the ‘garçonne’ look became fashionable. In 1903, she cut her hair short and ordered men’s clothes for a walking tour of England with her new (but short lived) husband John Ellingham Brooks.
In her memoir, Brooks later wrote:
“I decided to forego the many fateful prerogatives of my sex, the complexity of female clothes for instance. It would now be possible to live the simple life garbed solely in male sport attire.”
Not long after this, Brooks honed in on her painting style. After renting a studio in the popular artists’ coastal town, St. Ives in 1904, Brooks started to experiment with a tonal palette of grays, whites, and blacks with hints of teal and smaller dabs of other paints.
Italian poet Gabriele D'Annunzio, would later describe Brooks as “the most profound and wise orchestrator of grays in modern painting."
Brooks’ first solo exhibition in Paris in 1910 would establish her reputation as an artist and would be followed by around two decades of prolific painting, successful exhibitions across the globe, and romantic liaisons with some of the most famous women of the time, including the dancer Ida Rubinstein and writer Natalie Clifford Barney.
Throughout the 1920s, Brooks would paint portraits of women in her social circle, all in her signature tonal style. Many of these women often dressed in a masculine style. According to some biographers, although this style of dressing had become fashionable at this time, it also served as a secret code that only a minority of women knew how to read.
When Truman Capote visited Brooks in the 1940s he quipped in his trademark acid wit that Brook’s studio contained “the all-time ultimate gallery of all the famous dykes from 1880 to 1935 or thereabouts.”
However, modern-day interpretations tend to read the paintings in a more positive light, with some critics celebrating the self confidence and power resonating from these women in suits.
Natalie Barney recalls in her memoir how one portrait sitter complained “You haven’t beautified me,” to which Brooks said “I have ennobled you.”
By the 1930s however, Brooks was largely forgotten. Although there’s evidence that she continued to paint until her death in 1970, these works are now missing. Photographs give us tantalising clues that there are lost paintings out there waiting to be rediscovered. In the meantime, the pieces we do have access to give us a fascinating insight into an unconventional life.
It took a while for societal conventions to catch up with the rebellious life of Romaine Brooks; in 2016, in a feature about an exhibition of the artist’s work, Smithsonian magazine declared “the world is finally ready to understand Romaine Brooks.”
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