Cassandra Langer - Romaine Brooks: A Life

Romaine Brooks

A Life

Cassandra Langer

The University of Wisconsin Press

The University of Wisconsin Press

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Copyright 2015

The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

All rights reserved. Except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, transmitted in any format or by any means-digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise- or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press. Rights inquiries should be directed to .

Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Langer, Cassandra L., author.

Romaine Brooks: a life / Cassandra Langer.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-299-29860-9 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN 978-0-299-29868-5 (e-book)

1. Brooks, Romaine. 2. Lesbian artistsBiography.

3. Expatriate artistsFranceBiography. I. Title.

ND237872L36 2015

759.13dc23

[B]

2015008825

Dedicated to the women whose appreciation, generosity, and passion developed the arts in the twentieth century in Paris and around the world. To name only a few:

Natalie Barney

the Cone sisters

Mabel Dodge

Lily de Gramont

Winifred Ellerman, known as Bryher

Sylvia Beach

Peggy Guggenheim

Ida Rubinstein

Winnaretta Singer, Princesse de Polignac

Gertrude Whitney

QUI DONANT QUOQUE CREANT .

Those who bestow are artists as well.

First, I want to thank my team: I owe a debt of gratitude to my editor at the University of Wisconsin Press, Raphael Kadushin, for his belief in and support of my book for its value to readers who wanted a fresh view of Romaine Brooks and her circle. I also wish to thank my agent, Malaga Baldi, for her unstinting support and professional advice. She has sustained me throughout the course of bringing Romaine Brooks out from behind the masks she created to thwart the process. I am grateful to James Jayo for his attentiveness in making my first draft a less cumbersome book. My biography has benefited greatly from the involvement of Suzanne Stroh, who generously offered her translations from the French of Francesco Rapazzinis biography of lisabeth de Gramont, which provided a treasure trove of new information regarding the true nature of the relationship shared by Romaine Brooks, Natalie Barney, and Lily de Gramont. I also thank law interns Ken Brady and Elizabeth Vaysman of the Glushko-Samuelson Intellectual Property Clinic at American University for their amazing research and support on my behalf; Peter Jaszi and French lawyer Michle Salczer for their generosity their expertise in copyright law has been invaluable; and Elizabeth Smith for her technological magic, which conquered my lack of computer savvy and formatted my manuscript into readable copy.

I could not have completed this book without the generosity of the librarians and the various resources under their supervision. These archives provided me with primary materials for undertaking this project, foremost among them the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Smithsonian Institution Archives, Washington, DC; Alice Pike Barney Papers, National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC; Natalie Clifford Barney/Romaine Goddard Brooks Correspondence, McFarlin Library, Special Collections, University of Tulsa, Oklahoma; Fondazione Il Vittoriale degli Italiani, Gardone, Italy; and Bibliothque Littraire Jacques Doucet, Paris, France.

For primary sources, Romaine Brookss own autobiography (No Pleasant Memories) and war diary (On the Hills of Florence During the War) remain unrivaled, if sometimes unreliable, resources for biographers. Problematically, Brooks regularly revised her unpublished manuscripts with an eye toward eventual publication on the advice of various people she consulted. The Archives of American Art includes letters, photographs, newspaper clippings, and reviews that help to flesh out the picture I give of Romaine Brooks and her circle. The only known recording of her voice is captured in a series of taped interviews, conducted in French in the spring or summer of 1967 for the Paris bimonthly review Bizarre, which was recently discovered in the Archives of American Art. In 2014 Suzanne Stroh donated the transcription and translation of this audio recording to the Department of Special Collections and University Archives of McFarlin Library at the University of Tulsa, which houses the letters of Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney. Tulsa plans to make the materials available to researchers worldwide on the Internet. A reference copy of the materials is also lodged with the Romaine Brooks Papers at the Archives of American Art. The interviews give further insight into Romaine Brooks, pointedly contradicting some of what has been written about her personality by Meryle Secrest and the six biographers who have examined her in relation to Natalie Barney. Additional letters, photographs, and ephemera are located among Alice Pike Barneys papers at the National Museum of American Art, and a large body of correspondence between Romaine Brooks and Gabriele DAnnunzio is at the archive of the Vittoriale in Italy.

My deepest thanks go to Lois Fink, who first allowed me to read the restricted papers housed in the then National Collection of Fine Arts; to the late Joshua Taylor, director of the National Collection of Fine Arts (now the Smithsonian American Art Museum), and to the late Adelyn Breeskin, curator of contemporary art at the National Collection of Fine Arts, for their unfailing generosity in facilitating my work on Brooks. I have been especially fortunate in my relationship with Brooks collector Lucile Audouy, who most kindly opened her collection and heart to me when I visited her chteau to see her paintings, drawings, and notebooks by Romaine Brooks. She and her daughter, Cymbeline, have displayed inexhaustible patience, kindness, and efficiency in allowing me access to their collection and providing me with images that have not been widely circulated in the United States.