4.4.2.

Gender transgression in art: Romaine Brooks

In this recording, Maud Bracke is joined by Alex Crawford Mann, curator of prints and drawings at
the Smithsonian American Art Museum, to discuss how visual art can interrogate or transgress
established norms of gender and sexuality. Alex will focus on the work of a unique and long
forgotten artist, early 20th century US painter Romaine Brooks.

[Self-Portrait]

MAB: To consider how visual artists of earlier generations attempted to interrogate, transgress, or
subvert hegemonic norms regarding gender and sex, we would like to explore the work of the U.S.
artist Romaine Brooks, in particular a striking self-portrait that she painted in 1923. Today this
painting is in the collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington, and to discuss
it, I’m joined by the museum’s Curator of Prints and Drawings, Alex Mann. Thank you for sharing
your expertise, Alex.

Thank you, Maud. It’s a pleasure to speak about one of my favourite works in the
Smithsonian’s collections. Romaine Brooks was a successful and critically-acclaimed painter
in the 1910s and 20s, but she deserves wider recognition today -- not only for her skill as an
artist, but for the ways in which her works, mostly portraits, question and challenge the
gender norms of her time. You see both in this picture.

1. So Alex, who was Romaine Brooks? Could you start by telling us a little about the life of the
woman we meet here?

She was born in 1874, Beatrice Romaine Goddard, the youngest child in a very wealthy
Philadelphia family, but despite this privilege, Romaine had a miserable childhood. She
barely knew her father, who was estranged from the family, leaving primarily because
Romaine’s mother was emotionally abusive to almost everyone around her, particularly
Romaine. In addition, her older brother was mentally ill and often violent.

Decades later Romaine wrote about this in her memoirs, which she titled, No Pleasant
Memories, describing her early years as alternating between torture with her family, then
abandonment to elite girls’ schools in America, Italy, and Switzerland.

Within this cosmopolitan yet traumatic upbringing, drawing became Romaine’s refuge, and
at age 21 she left to take formal art classes in Paris and Rome.

This freedom also allowed her to explore her sexuality – as a teenager Romaine had
experienced crushes on female classmates, and once on her own, she quickly made friends
with expatriate intellectuals and independent thinkers who shared her love of the arts.

Through these years, Romaine developed a complex understanding of the visible signifiers of
gender, and the manipulation of its terms became central to her artwork and her daily life.

Two things in particular helped Romaine exert a high level of control over her self-expression
and performance of gender:

First, living in Europe as an expatriate, where she moved among circles in Rome, Paris,
London, and the island of Capri where she was not only away from the scrutiny of family, but
also outside expectations for conformity that applied to locals.

For examples, just being a painter was easier for women abroad. Drawing was seen as an
appropriate hobby for a young girl, but when Romaine claimed art as her career, she was
breaking gender rules. In Rome she was still the only woman in her life drawing classes at
the Accademia Nazionale, working with nude models, sometimes nude male models, but
this would have been completely forbidden at art schools in America in the 1890s.

Second, wealth. After Romaine’s mother passed away, she inherited millions and had the
financial independence to be a professional painter without the pressure to sell, and with a
sense of security that allowed her to pursue romantic relationships with whomever she
chose.

In her late 20s she married an Englishman, an aspiring pianist, but they quickly split – he was
gay, and even though they shared an intimate circle of friends, Romaine didn’t take well to a
husband having a say in her attire and activities.

So this is the Romaine who greets us in this Self-Portrait, twenty years later, a financially
emancipated woman who has ultimately settled in Paris and, by this point, is enjoying
romantic relationships exclusively with other women. These were dancers, singers, writers,
other painters – women who were, like Romaine, highly educated and artistic, and who also
understood how to craft a public persona, how to control and deploy the terms of gender.
2. Looking at the self-portrait, but also at some of her other key works, could you shed some light on
the techniques (narrative, aesthetic, contextual, …) she uses in order to imagine different sexual and
gendered forms of existence – different ways to be a woman or a man- and to subvert existing
norms?

Yes, this Self Portrait is a perfect piece for considering the intersection of Romaine’s art and
life. Let’s first remember that this painting is from 1923, almost a hundred years old, so as
you look at it, think about your impressions in terms of today’s norms of masculinity and
femininity, and also how it would have resonated in its own moment.

First, consider its scale, life-size – a large and ambitious work that fills the wall – a big picture
by masculine standards, and especially ambitious back then as a work by a woman.

Next, the clothes: Romaine wears a top-hat and a tailored horse-riding costume with gloves.
Some have called this cross-dressing, but I don’t think that’s the case at all – the outfit is
androgynous and utilitarian, but this person is not passing as a man. Yes, she is downplaying
the shape and features of her female body that traditionally are admired in portraits and
position women as objects of desire, but she also wears deep red lipstick – this is
unmistakably a woman.

And finally, Romaine’s face and gaze. She can see us, but her expression is blank and her
eyes are hidden. In this life-size portrait, the artist still remains elusive, guarded, and
empowered through what her pose and attire selectively reveal about her body and her
psyche.

[images 1 and 2: Self-Portrait + Peter, A Young English Girl]

Now let’s compare this to another portrait from the same moment of Romaine’s career,
titled Peter, A Young English Girl. The subject is another painter, born Hannah Gluckstein,
who went by “Gluck” and later “Peter Gluck.” Romaine records Peter’s tight hairstyle and
 even more masculine, non-gender conforming self-presentation. Unlike Romaine, Gluck
rejected female honorifics completely, again taking control of identity and appearance,
confidently break the rules of that time.

[images 1 and 3: Self-Portrait + Ida Rubenstein (1917)]

Next consider Romaine’s 1917 portrait of the flamboyant and magnificently feminine dancer
and socialite Ida Rubenstein, who was a frequent model for Romaine, as well as a friend and
at times, a love interest. Romaine considered these pictures – Ida, Peter, and herself, to be
part of a loose series of “Modern Women,” and by looking at them together, we recognize
that there is no single visual definition of gender. Rules are removed, and all of these
possibilities are on equal footing.

3. If we consider the wider social and artistic networks that Romaine was part of – which were
located in the US, in Paris, but were also transnational – where does Romaine Brooks sit? Who were
here peers, in art circles and beyond; who did she communicate with? Who did she paint for? And
who did she draw inspiration from- were there any artistic strands that she formed part of and was
influenced by?

As said, Romaine’s wealth gave her the privilege to choose her artistic subjects at will, to
exhibit publicly without needing to court critics and the market. She constructed a circle of
friends who admired her progressive subject matter and style, but she did not attempt to be
popular, nor to be at the vanguard of the modern art scene.

Visually, the dominant characteristics of Romaine’s work are its use of broad flat spaces and
its limited range of tones, predominantly blacks, whites, and greys. This aesthetic has been
compared to the work of Whistler, but Romaine never spoke about influences. What I see as
important about this style is the way in which the quiet poetry of her compositions focuses
 attention on the appearance and personality of her sitters, therefore doubling the impact of
these presentations of transgressive gender performance.

The other guiding concern in Romaine’s work is psychology, presenting herself and her
subjects as complex layers of identity and selfhood. Some of her works make us think of
dreams and surrealism.

[image 4: Le Trajet (The Crossing)]

Let’s look at Le Trajet (or The Crossing), a grand depiction of a female nude, almost life size,
provocatively posed on an unclarified wispy white cushion. The model for this is Ida
Rubinstein, who we just saw, here thin and pale, as if sleeping, dead, or faintly floating in the
artist’s imagination. Romaine was not in dialogue with surrealist artists of her time, but I
think her works share with that movement an attention to the emotional power of shapes
and colours, and to the complexities of character and psychology.

4. Finally how would you qualify her lasting significance or legacy today? In the 1960s Romaine
Brooks was ‘rediscovered’ and in recent years there appears to be a revived interest in her work –
reflected also in a major exhibition organised by the Smithsonian Museum in 2016. In what ways do
you think her work still bears a message for us today?
 [image 5: photograph of Romaine]

In her lifetime, the ways in which Romaine and her circle of friends challenged and revised
codes of gender expression was no doubt both liberating and isolating. In the 1920s, this
cognizant manipulation of one’s appearance, avoiding stereotypes and easy understanding,
was radical and confusing. Art historians debate about her Self-Portrait. Some see it as
tragic – the artist scarred by her childhood and marginal societal position as a lesbian – while
others read it as heroic, conquering these obstacles with confidence.

Overall, her work did not fit comfortably into chronologies of the history of art, mostly seen
as a sequence of works by men at that time, and her life was taboo, potentially subject to
criminal prosecution in some places, further limiting her reputation. Wealth allowed
Romaine to make these choices that were not available to most, and her art gives us a
vehicle for remembering them.

Today, however, expectations have changed, with a much greater degree of professional
and personal opportunities available to women and to people who are non-gender
conforming. Sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, and other forms of bigotry and
violence persist, but Romaine’s paintings show us what’s possible. She’s a complex artist
whose life and work merit more attention, and I’m grateful that she’s featured in this
course.

Image Credits

Image 1. Romaine Brooks, Self-Portrait, 1923, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift
of the artist, 1966.49.1

Image 2. Romaine Brooks, Peter (A Young English Girl), 1923-24, oil on canvas, Smithsonian
American Art Museum, Gift of the artist, 1970.70
Image 3. Romaine Brooks, Ida Rubinstein, 1917, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum,
Gift of the artist, 1968.18.10

Image 4. Romaine Brooks, Le Trajet, ca. 1911, oil on canvas, Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift
of the artist, 1968.18.3

Image 5. Carl Van Vechten, Romaine Brooks, ca. 1936, gelatin silver prints, Smithsonian American Art
Museum, Gift of Laura Dreyfus Barney and Natalie Clifford Barney, 2000.42