Ida+Rubinstein

Date: 1917
 * [[image:https://s3.amazonaws.com/saam.media/files/styles/x_large/s3/images/1968/1968.18.10_2a.jpg?itok=VQHGVA4L width="257" height="326" link="@https://americanart.si.edu/artwork/ida-rubinstein-2914"]] || Title: **Ida Rubinstein**

Artist: **Romaine Brooks** Born: Rome, Italy 1874 Died: Nice, France 1970

Medium: oil on canvas Dimensions: 46 7/8 x 37 in. (119.1 x 94.0 cm.) Smithsonian American Art Museum Gift of the artist

Accession: 1968.18.10 ||
 * About the Work: **

Russian dancer
 * About Ida Rubinstein: **

 born 1885, St. Petersburg, Russia  died Sept. 20, 1960, Vence, France

 An orphan of a well-to-do Jewish family, Rubinstein used her sizable inheritance for commissions for the arts. As a young woman she studied mime and recitation and was a great admirer of the American dancer Isadora Duncan. She studied with Michel Fokine, and he choreographed Salome for her, a performance that was seen only once, because of the censor’s intervention (1909). Although she moved gracefully, Rubinstein’s exceptional beauty apparently far outweighed her dancing talent. Nonetheless, Fokine recommended that Sergey Diaghilev use her in the title role of Cleopatra, which opened the Ballet Russes’ first Paris season in 1909. Other cast members included Anna Pavlova and Vaslav Nijinsky. Rubinstein was chosen also for Zobeide in the 1910 production of //Scheherazade//. The next year, she left Diaghilev’s company and formed her own troupe.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Rubinstein’s many commissions reflected her eye for great art. Among them were Maurice Ravel’s //Bolero// (1911) and //La Valse//, both choreographed by Fokine; Claude Debussy’s music for the poet Gabriele D’Annunzio’s //The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian// (1911), in which she played the title role; //The Fairy’s Kiss//, with music by Igor Stravinsky, choreographed by Bronislava Nijinska (1928); and //Persephone//, music by Stravinsky, choreography by Kurt Jooss (1934). In 1924 she danced Léo Staats’ //Istar// at the Paris Opéra. During this period she turned to serious drama, appearing in title roles such as //Camille// by Alexandre Dumas fils. Rubinstein’s troupe was most influential during the 1928–29 season. Though she revived the company in 1931 and again in 1934, she gave it up in 1935, retiring in seclusion on the French Riviera, where she lived until 1960. The many famous dancers who appeared with her company included Frederick Ashton, Roman Jasinsky, David Lichine, and Nina Verchinina.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Born: Rome, Italy 1874 <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Died: Nice, France 1970
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">About Romaine Brooks: **

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Embodying the image of the "third sex" or woman trapped in a man's body in her androgynous female portraits, Romaine Brooks was an American citizen who spent most of her life in Paris fleeing from the physical abuse of her mother and insanity of her brother. Her early life was detailed in her unpublished autobiography No Pleasant Memories.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Many of the subjects of Brooks portraits including her own self portrait (Smithsonian American Art Museum) were shown in tuxedoes with pinched faces and in colors of grey, black, and white. Her work was part of the new, daring image of the 20th-century woman no longer in the shadow of men.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">She was born into a wealthy family, and her parents divorced before her birth. In 1899, she took off for art school, studying briefly at the Scuola Nazionale in Rome and the Academie Colarossi in Paris, two of the few schools that would admit women. Later she stayed on the Isle of Capri, becoming part of the Anglo-American expatriate community and the island's growing gay culture.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In 1902, her mother and brother died, and she inherited a large fortune that allowed her much personal freedom, which was unique for a woman of that time. She lived in London, and when she determined to become an artist, she moved to Paris, becoming part of the Left Bank community.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">Although many of her peers were doing abstract art, she held to a representational style, exploring the subject of female identity within European social circles. She was especially intrigued by the role that external appearances of dress and manners played in sexual identity.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In 1910, she had a solo exhibition of her work in the prestigious Galeries Durand-Ruel in Paris, and several of the subjects of her portraits in that exhibit were socially elite people of Paris. Her work was boldly erotic for that time, especially for a woman.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">In 1911, she began a three-year relationship with Ida Rubinstein, a Russian dancer whom she also used as a model. By the 1920s, she was living with Natalie Barney, American poet and expatriate, and the two held forth in the literary salon that made both women famous. Many of the women who attended these salons became subjects of Brooks' paintings.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">By 1925, she had had major exhibitions of her work in New York, Paris, and London, and had become prominent among European and New York society. But after these shows and the ensuing attention she received, she became increasingly reclusive, devoting herself much more to drawing than painting and to writing her memoirs. She eventually retreated to her home in southern France where she lived to age 96, dying in 1970.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 110%;">She had never made much effort to gain exposure in the United States, but with the encouragement of Barney, she had sent many paintings and drawings to the National Collection of Fine Arts in Washington D.C. In 1971, a retrospective of her work was held there. In 2000, a major retrospective of her work was held at the National Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Artist Biography <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">SAAM Collections Page
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 14.3px;">Links: **