Natalie Clifford Barney

Natalie Clifford Barney
Natalie Clifford Barney, painted in 1896 by her mother Alice Pike Barney
Born	(1876-10-31)October 31, 1876 Dayton, Ohio, United States
Died	February 2, 1972(1972-02-02) (aged 95) Paris, France
Occupation	Writer and salonist
Nationality	American
Relatives	Albert Clifford Barney (father) Alice Pike Barney (mother)

Natalie Clifford Barney (October 31, 1876 – February 2, 1972) was an American playwright, poet and novelist who lived as an expatriate in Paris.

Barney's salon was held at her home at 20 rue Jacob in Paris' Left Bank for more than 60 years and brought together writers and artists from around the world, including many leading figures in French literature along with American and British Modernists of the Lost Generation. She worked to promote writing by women and formed a "Women's Academy" (L'Académie des Femmes) in response to the all-male French Academy while also giving support and inspiration to male writers from Remy de Gourmont to Truman Capote.

She was openly lesbian and began publishing love poems to women under her own name as early as 1900, considering scandal as "the best way of getting rid of nuisances" (meaning heterosexual attention from young males). In her writings she supported feminism and pacifism. She opposed monogamy and had many overlapping long and short-term relationships, including on-and-off romances with poet Renée Vivien and dancer Armen Ohanian and a 50-year relationship with painter Romaine Brooks. Her life and love affairs served as inspiration for many novels, ranging from the salacious French bestseller Sapphic Idyll to The Well of Loneliness, the most famous lesbian novel of the twentieth century.

Barney was born in 1876 in Dayton, Ohio, to Albert Clifford Barney and Alice Pike Barney. Her father was the son of a wealthy manufacturer of railway cars and of English descent, and her mother was of French, Dutch and German ancestry. Her maternal grandfather's father was Jewish. When Barney was five years old her family spent the summer at New York's Long Beach Hotel where Oscar Wilde happened to be speaking on his American lecture tour. Wilde scooped her up as she ran past him fleeing a group of small boys, held her out of their reach then sat her down on his knee and told her a story. The next day he joined Barney and her mother on the beach, where their conversation changed the course of Alice's life, inspiring her to pursue art seriously, despite, years later, her husband's disapproval. She later studied under Carolus-Duran and James McNeill Whistler. Many of Alice Pike Barney's paintings are now in the Smithsonian American Art Museum.