Out of the Closet

National Coming Out Day is celebrated every October 11 to empower people who identify themselves as gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered to let others know who they are.

While living in Paris in the 1920s, artist Romaine Brooks surrounded herself with a tightly knit, lesbian circle of friends that sustained her including Natalie Barney, an admired poet, and Radclyffe Hall, author of the lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness.

Una Troubridge, the subject of this portrait by Brooks, was married to Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge until she was introduced to Radclyffe Hall. Troubridge fell in love with and left her husband for Hall, who was named co-respondent by the admiral in an extraordinary lawsuit.

Although Brooks was fond of Una, she could not suppress a satirical thrust at the affected costume of her friend. The attenuated figure in striped trousers and elegant black coat, high collar, and neck cloth, topped off with a severe and monocled face, lent itself too readily to caricature.… The sitter was devoted to the raising of thoroughbred dogs, and the dachshunds on the show table were a championship pair given to her by her lover.

Source: William Kloss. Treasures from the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C. and London: National Museum of American Art with the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1985).

Pictured: Romaine Brooks, 1874 Italy–1970 France, Una, Lady Troubridge, 1924, oil, 50 1/8 x 30 1/8 in., Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of the artist.