Romaine Brooks

Chapter nine is coming along, albeit slowly. While everyone else was celebrating the end of the war, Romaine and Natalie were keeping a low profile due to their initial support for Mussolini. Ezra Pound whose first broadcasts were supported by Natalie, she paid for his first radio was being taken into custody as a traitor. Martha Gellhorn, Hemingway’s wife and a reporter on the Italian front intervened for the two elderly lesbians saving them the humiliation of being hauled in as supporting the failed government. Natalie returned to France sans Romaine who remained behind to try to rediscover her artist self. This was a journey that failed for a number of reasons I go into in the book. In 1961 Romaine did attempt a portrait of her good friend Uberto Strozzi. She failed to finish it and her perfectionism would not allow her to hazard the experiment again. So that was the end of Romaine as a painter. In 1968, the French academician E. MacAvoy who had always admired her work devoted an entire issue of Bizarre to her drawings. Shortly after that Laura and Natalie Barney arranged for the Smithsonian Museum of American Art to acquire her works. So Romaine despite poor health and growing self isolation marshaled the energy to inventory and make sure her paintings found a safe home in the United States in Washington, D.C. Others of her works were in French museums including her most famous painting, The Weeping Venus. Romaine Brooks died in 1970, shortly before her retrospective show debuted in 1971 and traveled to New York where it was favorably review by several important critics and where I began my 38 year relationship with the artist and her work.

In Chapter 10 I will try and sum up Romaine’s legacy and her life. I expect to finish the entire ms. by the end of August. Meanwhile, 8 chapters are in the hands of a potential agent. In this perilous publishing climate one can only keep one’s fingers and toes crossed. More later

I would also like to recommend the Patricia Cronin show now on at the Brooklyn Museum of Art. It is a homage to the 19th century lesbian sculptor, Harriet Hosmer. Cronin’s water colors, all in black and white pay tribute to Hosmer’s sculptures. There is an excellent book with an essay by William Gerdts among others. It is well worth the $32.00 and a collector’s item.