Romaine Brooks painted in a narrow band of greys at a time when much of the Paris art world was chasing brighter colour. Britannica describes her portraits as gray-shaded studies that distil their sitters’ personalities, and Smithsonian Magazine calls her work nearly monochromatic. Her sitters stand in tailored dark clothes against pale, misty or ruined backgrounds, and the few warm notes, a lip, a ribbon, a flower, do the work that a full palette would do elsewhere. If you design with restricted palettes, dark modes or editorial photography, her pictures show how much range a grey scale can hold.
A note on images: the Romaine Brooks works held by the Metropolitan Museum of Art are not flagged public domain, and the Art Institute of Chicago and the Cleveland Museum of Art hold no works by her, so this guide describes her work in text only. For public-domain paintings you can study and reuse, browse the MGD museum inspiration collection.
Who was Romaine Brooks?
She was born Beatrice Romaine Goddard in Rome on 1 May 1874 and died in Nice on 7 December 1970, according to Britannica; the Met’s collection records give the same places and years. She was American by birth, spent most of her working life in Europe, and divided her time chiefly between Paris and Capri. An inherited family fortune gave her independence as a painter and the freedom to choose her own sitters.
The core of her work is in Washington. Smithsonian Magazine reports that before her death she gave twenty-three paintings and thirty-seven drawings to what is now the Smithsonian American Art Museum, which it estimates holds about half of her known output. The museum, then the National Collection of Fine Arts, staged a retrospective in 1971, the year after she died; the National Museum of Women in the Arts held another in 2000, and the Smithsonian American Art Museum mounted The Art of Romaine Brooks in 2016.
Key works to know
Portrait de la Comtesse Anna de Noailles (about 1908). The Met holds this small oil on canvas, about 35 by 27 centimetres, of the French poet Anna de Noailles. It belongs to the years when Brooks was establishing herself in Paris as a portrait painter of society women and writers.
Self-Portrait (1923). Now at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. She shows herself in a dark tailored coat and top hat, the brim shading her eyes, against a grey sky and a pale, broken cityscape. Nearly everything is grey, black or off-white; the strongest colour is a small red ribbon on her lapel. Spellman Gallery’s text on the artist singles out this tuxedo-like dress and grey-black-white scheme as typical of her portraits.
The 1920s portraits. Through the 1920s she painted a series of women in sharply tailored, often masculine-cut clothes: high collars, dark jackets, cropped hair. The clothes become graphic shapes, flat dark masses that cut clean silhouettes against light grounds.
The drawings of the 1930s. In the early 1930s she turned to drawing. The Met holds two graphite drawings from this period, Evil Intentions (about 1930–35) and His Long Lost Brother, dated 5 March 1934. Her biographers describe these drawings as figures, creatures and fantasies built from long, looping lines that she let run without a plan.
What to look at in a Romaine Brooks painting
Value before colour. Squint at a Brooks portrait and it still reads, because the composition is built on light and dark rather than hue. The face is usually the lightest mass near the top, the clothes the darkest, and the background sits in a mid-grey that separates the two.
Temperature inside the grey. Her greys are not neutral. Some lean cool and blue, others warm toward brown or green. Shifting the temperature while keeping the value close lets her suggest sky, stone or fabric without breaking the overall calm.
The single accent. In the 1923 self-portrait a small red mark on the lapel is the only saturated note, so the eye goes straight to it and then to the face. One small hit of colour inside a grey field reads louder than a full palette.
Silhouette. The tailored clothing in her 1920s portraits gives the figures hard, simple outlines. A top hat, a collar, a coat edge: each is a clear shape against the ground, which is why her portraits read well at a distance and in reproduction.
Empty space. Backgrounds are thin and atmospheric: a grey sea, a hazy city, a plain wall. The space around the figure is quiet so that posture and expression do the talking.
Technique: a restricted palette, worked thin
- A grey-keyed palette. Britannica and the Smithsonian both stress the near-monochrome range. Grey, black and white form the base, with small touches of earth colour and the occasional red.
- Close values. Much of each canvas sits in a narrow range of mid-greys, so the few strong darks and lights stand out.
- Soft edges in the ground, hard edges on the figure. Backgrounds dissolve, while the outlines of hats, coats and collars stay crisp.
- Line as a separate language. In the 1930s drawings she gave up tone almost entirely and worked in graphite line, a useful reminder that a designer’s toolkit can switch registers within one body of work.
Her greys invite comparison with James McNeill Whistler, whose tonal portraits are a close relative; the University of Glasgow’s online catalogue of Whistler’s paintings includes a biography of Brooks among the people connected to his circle. For another artist of the period who used tailored dress, cropped hair and staged self-portraits to question how identity is shown, see our guide to Claude Cahun.
How designers can borrow Romaine Brooks’s ideas
- Design in greyscale first. Lay out a poster, page or screen in values only. If it works without colour, colour becomes a choice rather than a rescue.
- Build a warm and a cool grey scale. Make two ramps of five or six steps, one leaning blue and one leaning brown, and use the shift in temperature to separate areas that sit at similar values. Our colour palette generator can help you build and test the steps.
- Spend colour once. Pick a single accent, perhaps a red, and use it for one element per layout: a button, a headline rule, a tag. Brooks’s lapel ribbon shows how far one small mark can carry.
- Use silhouette in photography. Dress subjects in dark, simply cut clothing against pale, plain grounds. The strong outline survives small thumbnails and black-and-white printing.
- Leave the background quiet. A soft gradient or textured grey behind a portrait or product holds the frame together without competing.
- Pair tone with line. Combine a muted tonal image with loose line drawing in the same grey family, echoing the way her paintings and drawings sit side by side.
For more restrained historic palettes, see our guide to vintage colour palettes. Brooks died in 1970, so her paintings and drawings remain in copyright; take the principles and build your own palettes and images rather than reproducing her work.
Where to see Romaine Brooks’s work
The Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington holds about half of her known paintings and drawings, by Smithsonian Magazine’s estimate, including the 1923 Self-Portrait. The Metropolitan Museum of Art holds the portrait of Anna de Noailles and two drawings from the 1930s. Exhibitions at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in 2016 and the National Museum of Women in the Arts in 2000 brought renewed attention to her work.
Frequently asked questions
What is Romaine Brooks known for?
She is known for portraits painted in a restrained range of greys, blacks and whites, especially her 1923 self-portrait in a dark coat and top hat and her portraits of women in tailored, masculine-cut clothes from the 1920s.
Why did Romaine Brooks paint in grey?
Grey was the basis of her mature style. Britannica describes her gray-shaded portraits as distilling her sitters’ personalities, and the narrow palette keeps attention on posture, silhouette and expression.
Where can I see Romaine Brooks’s work?
Mainly at the Smithsonian American Art Museum in Washington. According to Smithsonian Magazine, Brooks gave the museum twenty-three paintings and thirty-seven drawings before her death, about half of her known output.
Can I use Romaine Brooks’s paintings in my designs?
No. She died in 1970 and her works are in copyright, and the Met does not flag its Brooks works as public domain. You can borrow her methods, such as grey-keyed palettes and single colour accents, but create your own images.
