Rose Is a Rose Is a Rose. . .Or Is It? If Empress Josephine Met Gertrude Stein April 14, 2011

In the early 19th century, Empress Josephine cultivated 250 varieties of roses at her Malmaison estate, and the rose soon became a symbol of love. One hundred years later, modernist expatriate Gertrude Stein declared, “Rose is a rose is a rose.” Her resonate repetition referred to Alice B. Toklas, upended the romantic rose, and offered up an icon of avant-garde modernism. What a rose was to Josephine was decidedly not what a rose was to Gertrude.