In an era still dominated by men, Brooks leaned into the subculture to which she belonged and painted largely her own friends and lovers. The exhibit at SAAM has several of her stormy yet intimate portraits of women, including one of Hannah “Gluck” Gluckstein, an artist who eschewed gender via a mode of dress that was both fashionable at the time and a signal of her sexuality. Gluck and Brooks were part of a growing but still little-known group of women who wore men’s clothes and cut their hair short not just to embrace the 1920s androgyny trend, but to communicate to others in the know that they were lesbians. Brooks’s portrait of Gluck, a centerpiece of the exhibit, is an incredible painting that captures the masculinity of Gluck’s style and the femininity that existed alongside it. Titled “Peter (A Young English Girl)” (1923–24), the work is a classically posed portrait showing its subject in profile, her hair swept back and her menswear dark. With just a passing glance, it would be easy to mistake Gluck for a man. But upon closer examination, there’s something about her features — a confidence and sharpness, as well as a delicacy — that transmit as deeply female. One gets the sense that Brooks respected her subject deeply — a respect that’s present in all her work and imbues it with a quiet intensity. There’s also a sense of movement that brings her subjects to life, as if they were about to walk off the canvas or shift slightly in their seats. Brooks’s own emotions run close to the surface in all her work. Her early paintings, which include portraits of wealthy aristocratic women, reflect a sense of constriction and self-conscious modesty. The subjects turn away from the viewer, while the softness of the brushstrokes blurs them ever so slightly, a stark contrast with the definition in Brooks’s later work. (https://hyperallergic.com/325736/a-lesbian-artist-who-painted-her-circle-of-women-at-the-turn-of-the-20th-century/)