orig. Beatrice Romaine Goddard
born May 1, 1874, Rome, Italy
died Dec. 7, 1970, Nice, Fr.
U.S. painter.
Born to wealthy American parents, she studied painting in Italy. After a brief marriage, in 1905 she moved to Paris where she established herself in literary, artistic, and homosexual circles. Her reputation reached its height in 1925 with several important exhibitions. Her gray-shaded portraits, touched by occasional colour, distilled their subjects' personalities to a disturbing degree. The Amazon (с 1920), Brooks's portrait of her longtime lover Natalie Clifford Barney (1876–1972), is among her finest works.