#Natalie Barney

[etruski]

Natalie Barney hanging around naked in nature has got to be one of my favourite photo categories

[g0ldengaze]

Natalie clifford barney with beast... Me WHEN???

[soulmaking]

[abwwia]

Olga Boznanska, Natalie Barney, ca. 1900, oil on fiberboard, 30 5⁄8 x 19 5⁄8 in. (77.8 x 49.8 cm.), Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Mme. Yvonne Guehennec and Mr. William E. Huntington, 1976.153.26

Olga Boznańska (15 April 1865 – 26 October 1940) was a Polish painter of the turn of the 20th century. She was a notable painter in Poland and Europe, and was stylistically associated with the French impressionism, though she rejected this label. Via wikipedia

[unefemmemapparut]

[circeeoflesbos]

Mon aimée est plus cruelle que la vie, elle est aussi plus cruelle que la mort ; car, comme la vie, elle tue, et, comme la mort, elle ressuscite.

Natalie Barney — Je me souviens... (1910)

[just-an-enby-lemon]

Natalie Barney is so iconic.

She really went put of her way to be a great artist, help other artists- specially woman - and date all the pretty ladies and she did it.

Also sry for her dad but if both my wife and my daugther were super talented artists who loved what they did I would be super proud and not be against it at all. Sry but I"m different.

[valkyries-things]

NATALIE BARNEY // WRITER

“She was an American writer who hosted a literary salon at her home in Paris that brought together French and international writers. She influenced other writers through her salon and also with her poetry, plays and epigrams, often thematically tied to her lesbianism and feminism.”

[marblegauze]

Natalie Barney circa. 1900

@ the Smithsonian Institute

[andyundan]

Bitches named Natalie will write the most lesbian poetry ever

[linsaad]

Cette pâle immortelle avait elle l'accent

De tes yeux de saphir à la clarté païenne,

Et la limpidité de ta chair lesbienne

Où le bout de tes seins veille amoureusement "

Natalie Clifford Barney

[etruski]

dykes with hats

[queerographies]

[S'avanza la mia ombra a passi di lupa][Valeria Palumbo]

Romanie Brooks: L’Invisibilità di un’Artista Libera Titolo: S’avanza la mia ombra a passi di lupa. Romaine Brooks e les Amazones: viaggio tra artiste incendiarieScritto da: Valeria PalumboEdito da: Enciclopedia delle DonneAnno: 2024Pagine: 296ISBN: 9788899270568 Di cosa parla S’avanza la mia ombra a passi di lupa di Valeria Palumbo Perché non esiste nessun segno del passaggio di Romanie…

[hard--headed--woman]

For this 2nd day of Pride Month I decided to talk about a woman I mentionned yesterday in the post about Renée Vivien (that you should absolutely read by the way, Renée Vivien is amazing) :

Natalie Clifford Barney !

I talked about her to say that she's had a love story with Renée Vivien, but that's not the only thing she's done.

Natalie was born in 1876 in the United States and died in 1972 in Paris, at the age of 95. Writer and poet, she was the first woman to use the word "lesbian" in her writings (in this case a collection of poems, published in 1899), instead of the word "tribade" (it's another word for lesbian in french) or simply "homosexual". The word lesbian back then was even more taboo than it is today, so you can imagine how important this fact was (and still is).

She was also famous for the parties she organised: she held a literary salon which she wanted to turn into the "new Mytilene". She invited the female artists, writers and intellectuals of her time, in response to the all-male Académie Française, and they all spent whole afternoons and evenings in the flat of the wealthy American.

Natalie never tried to hide her homosexuality. As she said in a sentence that quickly became her most famous one,

"Why would anyone blame me for being a lesbian ?"

(Yes, that's her with Renée Vivien)

Natalie's mother (a renowned artist) and her tutor awakened her interest in the French language at an early age, and when she was a little older, she was sent to a school in France; thanks to this, she spoke French fluently and without an accent, and developed a soft spot for this country.

Natalie was 12 when she realized she was a lesbian, and decided right away to "live in the open, without hiding from anyone".

Hee first known relationship was with Liane de Pougy, a famous dancer of the time (whom she cheated on with many women). Natalie wrote about this love story in her collection Quelques portraits, sonnets de femmes. ("Some portraits, sonnets of women"). Liane wrote about it in her novel "Idylle sapphique", which so fascinated the French public that it had to be reprinted sixty times in the same year, with people torn between admiration and scandal. The two women eventually parted ways, however, due to Natalie's infidelities and Liane's "debauched lifestyle" (in Natalie's words).

As I said, this book caused a huge scandal. Natalie was forced to return to the United States, where her father burned all her writings he could find, and tried to marry her off. However, she categorically refused to obey him, and faced with her stubbornness, her father gave up, and Natalie returned to Paris, where she had a lot of lovers. Among these lovers, there's Renée Vivien (probably the most important, since Natalie never accepted their breakup and tried to get Renée back until Renée died at 32) Lucie Delarue-Mardrus, Colette, Emma Calvé, Olive Custance, Henriette Roggers and many others.

In 1902, on the death of her father, Natalie Clifford Barney inherited a large fortune and was able to rent a house in Neuilly-sur-Seine, where she gave parties that became the talk of the town.

In 1910, she moved into a house at 20 rue Jacob ; for nearly sixty years, this house was the setting for her famous "Fridays", one of the last influential literary salons. A LOT of famous people went there. Like really. The complete list is on Wikipedia if you're curious, and here's a screenshot with some examples :

Marie Skłodowska-Curie went there. Albert Einstein went there. Apollinaire and Proust went there. Oscar Wilde went there. That's cazy to me!

She's had other lovers, like Elisabeth de Clermont-Tonnerre, but her greatest love story was with the painter Romaine Brooks, with whom she had a relationship similar to that of a married couple from 1914 to the end of her life. Of course, this didn't stop her from cheating on Romaine with other women: Natalie was known for her infidelities, believing that polygamy was necessary for a couple's survival, although she claimed that this didn't stop her from being deeply in love with Romaine. She cheated on her for example with Oscar Wilde's niece Dolly, and Nadine Huong, whose story I'll tell one day because it's so interesting!

She spent the years of the Second World War in Italy, and later returned to France to find her second home, which she shared with Romaine Brooks, destroyed. In 1949, she reopened her salon (which started to welcome more and more famous actors and actresses on top on everyone else).

Nothing much happened for the rest of his life. She never left Romaine Brooks (despite continuing to have affairs with a host of other women) and died in Paris in 1972, aged 95.

Natalie Clifford Barney's work and life were very important not only for culture itself, but also for the lesbian community. She made a major contribution to lesbian visibility, opened many minds, helped normalize (even if we still have a long way to go) homosexuality and, above all, helped many lesbian women accept themselves, understand that they were not alone and live the life they deserved.

The influence of her works and her salon on culture, literature, cinema, theater and even science is immense and deserves to be recognized. We should be talking about her much more than we are!

Here's some of her poems with an english translation :

And she's written loads of other stuff that I really recommend you read! She was an interesting woman who wrote interesting things. Look her up on Google and read her writings and her life!

Anyway, that's it! Sorry for posting so late, and see you tomorrow for the 3rd lesbian pride post 🏳️‍🌈

[abwwia]

Romaine Brooks and Natalie Barney, c. 1935. Accession 96-153: Alice Pike Barney Papers, 1861-1965, Smithsonian Institution Archives, neg. no. SIA2014-03839

[women-loving-art]

Natalie Clifford Barney, about Renée Vivien, after they met for the first time and Renée recited a poem for her, from A Perilous Advantage