Miss Florence Bradley of Chicago

Here is a picture from Chicago in the years when Alice Roullier ran exhibitions at the brand-new Arts Club, and Rue Carpenter was its president; Harriet Monroe was publishing her young magazine, Poetry; and the fledgling Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, soon to be led by photographer Eva Watson-Schütze, was presenting contemporary art. Florence Bradley knew all of these path-breaking women and, although she is little known today, was one herself. Two years before sitting for this portrait, Bradley took drugs while staying with arts patron Mabel Dodge in Paris, and through a connection to Gertrude Stein showed the work of the young, gay painter Marsden Hartley in her Chicago apartment. See also: Liesl Olson, Chicago Renaissance (2017)