Romaine Brooks’s Villa in the hills of Florence is being restored. This is the place that she and her lover Natalie Barney suffered privations and constant threats of being sent off to an internment camp in Parma before deportation to a concentration camp because of being foreigners, and in Natalie’s case having Jewish blood during WWII.
The Ballet Russe Affair
This year the Ballet Russe is on the scene celebrating its centennial. Ida Rubenstein, Romaine’s lover, was a star of the ballet who electrified Paris with her sensational performances. The triangle that emerged between Romaine, Gabriele D’Annunzio, and Ida was almost as spectacular as the opulent staging of the Ballet Russe’s Cleopatre and Scheherezade.
Brooks satirized the relationship by presenting D’Annunzio’s thwarted desires in this scathing parody after her breakup with D’Annunzio. Her revenge — she invited him to her studio to see the painting. We don’t know what transpired between the two of them; only that the friendship continued, albeit on a different basis, for the rest of their lives.
I go into this in much more depth and analysis in my forthcoming book, Romaine Brooks: A Life.
Brooks’ queer heroic portraits of women
This page is dedicated to the lesbian expatriate artist Romaine Goddard Brooks (1874-1970). Brooks was the epitome of style and could give most fashion designers today cards and spades when it comes to understated elegance. She designed her own man-tailored clothinge and made everything in her life according to her singular tastes.
I am going to be presenting a talk on Romaine’s relationship with adventurer, man of letters and womanizer, Gabriele d’Annunzio, on Saturday. This takes place in Las Vegas at the Women and Fascism panel of the Modern Studies Association. I was invited by author Barbara Wills whose recent book Unlikely Collaboration: Gertrude Stein, Bernard Fay, and the Vichy Dilemma has created a great stir among those devoted to feminist and queer studies, as well as among admirers of Stein’s modernism.
My own presentation deals with Romaine Brooks’ queer heroic portraits of women. I have written a couple of articles on these but this will be my first dedicated presentation detailing, however briefly, the connection between Romaine Brooks and Gabriele d’Annunzio and the impact that relationship had on her signature style.
Rediscovering Romaine Brooks 