Romaine Brooks - by Cassandra Langer (Hardcover)

About the Book

The artistic achievements of Romaine Brooks (1874-1970), both as a major expatriate American painter and as a formative innovator in the decorative arts, have long been overshadowed by her fifty-year relationship with writer Natalie Barney and a reputation as a fiercely independent, aloof heiress who associated with fascists in the 1930s. In Romaine Brooks: A Life, art historian Cassandra Langer provides a richer, deeper portrait of Brooks's aesthetics and experimentation as an artist.

Book Synopsis

This impressive collection brings to light the works of international scholars, some previously unavailable to an English-language audience. With new information and assessments about the art, architecture, and archaeology of one of the most dynamic periods in the history of the ancient world the transition between pre-Roman and Roman Italy these scholars focus on ancient Italy and the wider Mediterranean. Shedding new light on the evidence of well-known and recently excavated sites and the objects they have yielded their iconography, manufacturing techniques, and afterlives this collection follows the first archaeological traces of the rise of ancient Italy to its rediscovery in the Renaissance and its reinvention in contemporary fiction, offering a vibrant contribution to classical studies.
Paying tribute to Richard Daniel De Puma, a scholar who has made significant and influential contributions to Etruscan and Roman studies, the contributors to this collection echo the ambition and creativity of his work while offering an up-to-date survey of contemporary Etruscan scholarship. In surveying new developments in both fields, the work collected here represent the diverse, interdisciplinary interests of De Puma as well as areas of recent groundbreaking research."

Review Quotes

"Cassandra Langer insightfully recounts the life of Romaine Brooks, including the sources of her creativity and blocks to that creativity in later life, her bigotry, and her contributions to twentieth-century British, merican, and French culture. This readable, vivid biography provides social and general historical context for Brooks's life, art, and writings, as well as incisive psychological analysis of her motives."--Betsy Draine, author of Substance under Pressure: Artistic Coherence and Evolving Form in the Novels of Doris Lessing

"Langer makes clear that Romaine Brooks was an artist of unusual courage and originality, tracing her development not only as an artist, but as a woman artist and a boldly lesbian artist. This biography includes fascinating material on the many talented, independent, and liberated women in Paris in the 1920s, with Natalie Barney and Romaine Brooks at the center of that milieu." --Jerry Rosco, author of Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography

"A biography of the American painter and heiress (1874-1970), whose work in art and decor has been overshadowed by her romantic relationship with the writer Natalie Barney and what were seen as flirtations with Italian Fascism."--Chronicle of Higher Education


"Art historian Langer is zealous and exacting as she seeks to fully portray her heretofore too-little-known subject, . . . addressing the complexities and contradictions of Brooks's life and celebrating the courage and power of her meticulously composed paintings. . . . Langer sensitively grapples with Brooks's elitism, bigotry, and fascist tendencies while avidly reclaiming this 'fascinating and controversial' artist's elegant and evocative, haunted and defiant art in praise of audacious women."--Booklist, *starred review


"Romaine Brooks has long glimmered in the constellation of lesbian and queer culture; now, through the prism of Langer's tireless research and intelligent yet conversational style, the brilliance of Brooks's life and career is both magnified and refracted. By turns anecdotal and analytical, journalistic and theoretical, Langer colorfully repaints the historical portrait of Brooks, revealing her as both more radical and more conservative than we thought."--James M. Saslow, author of Pictures and Passions: A History of Homosexuality in the Visual Arts


"An excellent, well-researched biography that recreates the tumultuous life of an artist who refused compromise on her convictions, both personal and political, as naïve as some of her views may have been. Romaine Brooks is decidedly an important addition to lesbian history."--Lambda Literary

"Adds new material to the life and career of Romaine Brooks, offers fresh insight into her life and art, and defies the characterizations given her by previous biographers. . . . In years to come, when Romaine Brooks is mentioned, Cassandra Langer's book will be given as the quintessential authority on the subject."--Bookwatch

About the Author

Cassandra Langer is an art historian, critic, and appraiser. She is the author and editor of several books, including New Feminist Criticisms: Art, Identity, Action. She lives in New York and blogs at cassandralanger.com.