Fig. 1. Sylvia Woodbridge Beach [1887–1962] by Berenice Abbott (1898–1991), 1928. Gelatin silver print, 3 3/4 by 3 1/8 inches. National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC.
The stars are aligned in the museum world just now: the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s The Harlem Renaissance and Transatlantic Modernism is drawing crowds heretofore ignorant of the international scope of the movement, as well as its vast range of talent. The interwar period is also the focus of a revelatory exhibition at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Brilliant Exiles: American Women in Paris 1900–1939 brings together images of fifty-seven women—the famous, the lesser known, and the utterly forgotten figures, both Black and white, who left home for Paris, where they changed the face of modernism in, as the catalogue has it, “art . . . literature, dance, publishing, fashion, music, journalism, and theater.” A bold claim? Yes, and a convincing one.
The National Portrait Gallery is, of course, the ideal venue for displaying the figures of this lost generation, for unlike the well-known male members of the celebrated Lost Generation, the ways in which these women dressed and presented themselves for camera and canvas were often deliberate and essential signs of their singularity. (Who, after all, can remember or cares what John Dos Passos looked like?) From Sylvia Beach (Fig. 1), publisher of Ulysses, to the cabaret star Florence Emory (1890/1892–1932), personal style was the outward and visible sign of personal reinvention, liberation—and accomplishment. The sheer variety of individual fashions on view is proof of that.
Fig. 2. Lillian Evanti [1890–1967] by Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998), 1940. Oil on canvas, 42 by 32 inches. National Portrait Gallery, gift of Max Robinson.
Fig. 3. Josephine Baker [1906–1975] by Paul Colin (1892–1985), 1927. Signed “PAUL/ COLIN” at lower right. Lithograph with pochoir coloring on paper, 18 1/2 by 12 1⁄2 inches (sheet). National Portrait Gallery, bequest of Jean-Claude Baker.
Fig. 4. Josephine Baker by Stanislaus Julian Walery (1863–1935), 1926. Gelatin silver print, 8 3/4 by 6 3/8 inches (image). National Portrait Gallery.
Fig. 5. Anaïs Nin [1903–1977] by Natashia Troubetskoia (active c. 1932), c. 1932. Oil on canvas, 76 by 43 1⁄2 inches. National Portrait Gallery.
Fig. 6. Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney [1875–1942] in Bakst Costume with Fleurs du Mal by Howard Gardiner Cushing (1869–1915), 1911–1912. Oil on canvas, 104 1/4 by 63 inches. Private collection.
Fig. 7. Peggy Guggenheim [1898–1979] by Alfred Courmes (1898–1993), 1926. Signed and dated “A. Courmes/ août 1926” at lower left. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 by 25 7/8 inches. Musée franco-américain du château de Blérancourt, France.
Paris made them, and they undoubtedly changed Paris (though possibly not for Parisian women, but that is something for the French to research). Paris was the city where Ada Beatrice Queen Victoria Louise Virginia Smith (1894–1984), better known as Bricktop, would teach the Charleston and the Black Bottom to Cole Porter and the Prince of Wales; Paris is where the modernist writer Djuna Barnes (1892–1982), had she not gone there, would have gone mad . . . or madder. A significant number of the brilliant exiles were bisexual like Barnes or lesbian like Natalie Barney (1876–1972), whose salon was both a haven and a launching pad for women (and men) of various sexual persuasions and accomplishments, Edna St. Vincent Millay (1892–1950) and Peggy Guggenheim (Fig. 7) being among the better known included here.
The portraits will draw us in, but the wall labels and excellent catalogue copy by curator Robyn Asleson (with essays by Zakiya R. Adair, Samuel N. Dorf, Tirza True Latimer, and T. Denean Sharpley-Whiting) will keep us here, eager to learn about such visually enticing figures as the African American opera singer Lillian Evanti (Fig. 2) and to discover far more about those we think we know like Isadora Duncan (Fig. 8) and Josephine Baker (Figs. 3, 4).
Later in life Baker was to look back at sailing past Liberty Island on her first trip abroad in 1925. She might have been speaking for any number of brilliant exiles when she wrote, “What was the good of having the statue without the liberty. . . . I preferred the Eiffel Tower, which made no promises.”
Fig. 8. Isadora Duncan [1877–1927] by Abraham Walkowitz (1880–1965). Signed “A. Walkowitz” at bottom. Ink, watercolor, and pencil on paper, 14 by 8 1/2 inches. Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, Washington, DC, Joseph H. Hirshhorn Bequest.
Fig. 9. Self-Portrait by Anne Estelle Rice (1877–1959), c. 1909–1910. Oil on canvas, 30 inches square. Private collection.
Fig. 10. Portrait of Emily Crane Chadbourne[1871–1964] by Tsuguharu Foujita (1886–1968), 1922. Tempera and silver leaf on canvas, 35 1/4 by 57 1⁄2 inches. Art Institute of Chicago, gift of Emily Crane Chadbourne.
Fig. 11. Gertrude Stein [1874–1946] by Pablo Picasso (1881–1973), 1905–1906. Oil on canvas, 39 3/8 by 32 inches. Metropolitan Museum of Art, bequest of Gertrude Stein.
Fig. 12. Self-Portrait by Loïs Mailou Jones (1905–1998), 1940. Casein on board, 17 1/2 by 14 1⁄2 inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC, bequest of the artist.
Fig. 13. Nancy Elizabeth Prophet [1890–1960] in Hat, photographer unknown, c. 1922–1929. Gelatin silver print, 6 by 4 inches (image). Rhode Island College, Providence. James P. Adams Library Special Collections.
Fig. 14. Self-Portrait by Louise Heron Daura (1905–1972), 1929. Signed and dated “Louise Heron Daura/ Paris 1929” at upper right. Oil on board, 23 1/2 by 18 5/8 inches. Georgia Museum of Art, University of Georgia, Athens, gift of Martha Randolph Daura.
Fig. 15. Caresse Crosby [1892–1970] by Polia Chentoff (c. 1890–1933), 1927. Signed “P Chentoff” at lower right. Oil on canvas, 18 1/8 by 15 inches. Southern Illinois University Carbondale, Special Collections Research Center.
Fig. 16. Self-Portrait by Romaine Brooks (1874 –1970), 1923. Oil on canvas, 46 1/4 by 26 7/8 inches. Smithsonian American Art Museum, gift of the artist.
