Azalées Blanches was one of Brooks’s first paintings of the female nude and the earliest in which she presented an openly erotic figure. The female nude was a ubiquitous subject for Brooks’s male contemporaries, but in 1910 a female artist’s depiction of the theme was relatively unusual. Brooks’s inclusion of this frankly sexual work in her debut exhibition at Durand-Ruel Gallery in Paris was a provocative gesture. Referring to this moment in her unpublished memoir, Brooks wrote, ​“I grasped every occasion no matter how small, to assert my independence of views.” Audience members also recognized Brooks’s challenge; a reviewer compared it to Édouard Manet’s iconic modern nude Olympia (1863).

The Art of Romaine Brooks, 2016