Romaine Brooks

Chapter 9 has finally begun to shape up.  As I come to the end of this research I find myself thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Romaine Brooks appears to me to be a perfect female version with her extreme fluxuations of emotion and her ability to sever even her closest ties. Her actions are based on her own set of rules of conduct that were largely inflexable. One of the reasons for her inflexability had to do with her horrendous childhood; a trauma that she never was able to recover from. Despite her best efforts and they were heroic at the end of her life she reverted to patterns that left her dying alone in a black curtained room at the age of 96.

Nonetheless, what remains is her legacy; her pantheon of queer heroic portraits that writer Truman immortalized in his unfinished novel, Answered Prayers. He describes Natalie inviting him to visit Romaine’s studio in Paris, where  ”There were perhaps seventy [paintings], all portraits of a flat and ultra realism, the subjects were women…You know how you know you are not going to forget something? I wasn’t going to forget this moment,  in this room, this array of butch babes, all of whom to judge from their coifs and cosmetics, were painted between 1917 and 1930. He goes on to tell a fellow writer, “The paintings were wonderful, they really were.”   After spending over three decades of my life–my longest love affair–with Romaine I couldn’t agree more. The work is really, really wonderful if you know how to read it. My book is perhaps the first that attempts to demonstrate to readers how Romaine might have wanted her work interpreted. The part that music plays in her expression is central to her technique and makes her approach truly unique.

Her last great and unfinished portrait of her friend, Uberto Strozzi is the culmination of her artistic output. Painted when she was 86 and after a hiatus of 16 years it represents the alpha and omega of her artistic talent. She began it in 1961 and spent months preparing her studio. She torn the roof off and had it replaced with glass. Then she installed an elaborate system of black curtains and pulleys so she could control the shadows and lights. As she had become short-sighted and nearly blind in one eye she had to walk back and forth between her canvas and her subject to get her impressions down on the canvas. She did this for many hours for weeks at a time. In typical Brooksian fashion she expected her sitters to endure imposible conditions when they posed for her. In Strozzi’s case he was instructed not to say a word, to sit in exactly the position she place him in and not move a muscle. Moreover, he had to remain perfectly frozen in a stiffling, airless room for endless hours while Brooks fussed over the smallest details of her canvas. In spite of these inhuman conditions the unfished product is a masterpiece. And, miracle of miracle they still remained friends.

In the meantime Brooks’s relationship with her lover of half a century took an unexpected turn. She had hoped to finally have Natalie Barney all to herself, even if she would not allow them to live together as Barney wished. In 1955 or 56 while visiting Romaine in Nice, Natalie met Janine Lahovary. Janine was some 50 years younger than Natalie and Straight. She fell madly in love with Natalie who was then in her 80s.  When Lahovary’s husband died in 1963, she moved to Paris to live with Natalie becoming her secretary, caregiver, nurse and lover. Romaine accepted the new arrangement because she knew Natalie needed someone to care for her in her old age. Romaine was fighting off old age herself but was too independent to accept Janine’s care. However, as the years marched on she found she could not abide Lahovary. She thought the woman was beyond contempt and was using Natalie’s dependency to take advantage of her. The two women fought over their individual claims on Natalie’s affections. This, even though Natalie made it clear that Romaine was her soul mate and that she loved her unconditionally. No matter, a year and a half before she died Romaine severed ties with Natalie over several incidents that she simply could not accept. She refused to open Natalie’s letters, writing on them Miss Barney, Paris. She resisted all pleas for Natalie to see her and ended her days in a black curtained room totally isolated except for her two faithful servants. Natalie died two years later and was buried clutching a photograph of Romaine to her breast.

Romaine’s Lagacy has yet to be fully evaluated despite the birth of a Romaine Brooks cult among art historians, queer theorists and art lovers following her 1971 exhibition.  As the 21st Century marches on it becomes increasingly clear that we have much to learn from her life and art. In a time of chaos, in a time of war, her life begs the questions how does one make sense of life, how does one make art? All of these questions are raised by All or Nothing: Romaine Brooks a Critical Study.  I hope to answer a few of them in chapter 10 of this book.