Nina Hamnett
Encyclopedia
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' chanteys, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.
Early life
Hamnett was born in the small coastal town of TenbyTenby
Tenby is a walled seaside town in Pembrokeshire, South West Wales, lying on Carmarthen Bay.Notable features of Tenby include of sandy beaches; the 13th century medieval town walls, including the Five Arches barbican gatehouse ; 15th century St...
, Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire
Pembrokeshire is a county in the south west of Wales. It borders Carmarthenshire to the east and Ceredigion to the north east. The county town is Haverfordwest where Pembrokeshire County Council is headquartered....
, southwest Wales
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
. From 1906 to 1907 she studied at the Pelham Art School and then at the London School of Art until 1910. In 1914 she went to the Montparnasse
Montparnasse
Montparnasse is an area of Paris, France, on the left bank of the river Seine, centred at the crossroads of the Boulevard du Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, between the Rue de Rennes and boulevard Raspail...
Quarter in Paris
Paris
Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...
, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
to study at Marie Vassilieff
Marie Vassilieff
Mariya Ivanovna Vassiliéva , , better known as Marie Vassilieff, was a Russian painter....
's Academy.
While studying in London she met and posed for Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska
Henri Gaudier-Brzeska was a French sculptor who developed a rough hewn, primitive style of direct carving....
who sculpted a series of nude bronzes. During this period she became friendly with Olivia Shakespear
Olivia Shakespear
Olivia Shakespear, , was a British novelist, playwright, and patron of the arts. She wrote six books that are described as "marriage problem" novels. Her works sold poorly, sometimes only a few hundred copies. Her last novel, Uncle Hilary, is considered her best...
and Ezra Pound
Ezra Pound
Ezra Weston Loomis Pound was an American expatriate poet and critic and a major figure in the early modernist movement in poetry...
. She went on to have a love affair with Brzeska, and later with Modigliani and Roger Fry
Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
.
On her first night in the Bohemian
Bohemianism
Bohemianism is the practice of an unconventional lifestyle, often in the company of like-minded people, with few permanent ties, involving musical, artistic or literary pursuits...
community she went to the café La Rotonde where the man at the next table introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". In addition to making close friends with Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Modigliani
Amedeo Clemente Modigliani was an Italian painter and sculptor who worked mainly in France. Primarily a figurative artist, he became known for paintings and sculptures in a modern style characterized by mask-like faces and elongation of form...
, Pablo Picasso
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso known as Pablo Ruiz Picasso was a Spanish expatriate painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist, and stage designer, one of the greatest and most influential artists of the...
, Serge Diaghilev, and Jean Cocteau
Jean Cocteau
Jean Maurice Eugène Clément Cocteau was a French poet, novelist, dramatist, designer, playwright, artist and filmmaker. His circle of associates, friends and lovers included Kenneth Anger, Pablo Picasso, Jean Hugo, Jean Marais, Henri Bernstein, Marlene Dietrich, Coco Chanel, Erik Satie, María...
, she stayed for a while at La Ruche
La Ruche
La Ruche is an artist's residence at the Paris South-Western outskirts.Located in the "Passage Dantzig," in the 15th arrondissement of Paris, La Ruche was an old three-storey circular structure that got its name because it looked more like a large beehive than any dwelling for humans...
with many of the leading members of the avant-garde living there at the time. In Montparnasse she also met her husband, the Norwegian
Norway
Norway , officially the Kingdom of Norway, is a Nordic unitary constitutional monarchy whose territory comprises the western portion of the Scandinavian Peninsula, Jan Mayen, and the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard and Bouvet Island. Norway has a total area of and a population of about 4.9 million...
artist Roald Kristian.
Flamboyant lifestyle
Flamboyantly unconventional, and openly bisexual, Nina Hamnett once danced nude on a Montparnasse café table just for the "hell of it". She drank heavily, was sexually promiscuous, and kept numerous lovers and close associations within the artistic community. Very quickly, she became a well-known bohemian personality throughout Paris and modeled for many artists. Her reputation soon reached back to LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, where for a time, she went to work making or decorating fabrics, clothes, murals, furniture, and rugs at the Omega Workshops
Omega Workshops
The Omega Workshops was a design enterprise founded by members of the Bloomsbury Group and established in 1913. It was located at 33 Fitzroy Square in London, and was founded with the intention of providing graphic expression to the essence of the Bloomsbury ethos...
, which was directed by Roger Fry
Roger Fry
Roger Eliot Fry was an English artist and art critic, and a member of the Bloomsbury Group. Establishing his reputation as a scholar of the Old Masters, he became an advocate of more recent developments in French painting, to which he gave the name Post-Impressionism...
, Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury group, and the sister of Virginia Woolf.- Biography and art :...
, and Duncan Grant
Duncan Grant
Duncan James Corrowr Grant was a British painter and designer of textiles, potterty and theatre sets and costumes...
.
Her artistic creations were widely exhibited during World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
including at the Royal Academy in London as well as the Salon d'Automne
Salon d'Automne
In 1903, the first Salon d'Automne was organized by Georges Rouault, André Derain, Henri Matisse, Angele Delasalle and Albert Marquet as a reaction to the conservative policies of the official Paris Salon...
in Paris. Back in England, she taught at the Westminster Technical Institute from 1917 to 1918. After divorcing Kristian, she took up with another free spirit, composer E. J. Moeran.
From the mid 1920s until the end of World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, the area known as Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
was London's main Bohemian artistic centre. The place took its name from the popular Fitzroy Tavern on the corner of Charlotte and Windmill Streets that formed the area's centre. Home of the café life in Montparnasse, it was Nina Hamnett's favourite hangout as well as that of her friend from her home town, Augustus John
Augustus John
Augustus Edwin John OM, RA, was a Welsh painter, draughtsman, and etcher. For a short time around 1910, he was an important exponent of Post-Impressionism in the United Kingdom....
, and later another Welshman
Wales
Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...
, the poet Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
.
Later life
In 1932 Hamnett published Laughing Torso, a tale of her bohemian life, which became a bestseller in the United KingdomUnited Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
and United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. The notorious occultist Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley
Aleister Crowley , born Edward Alexander Crowley, and also known as both Frater Perdurabo and The Great Beast, was an influential English occultist, astrologer, mystic and ceremonial magician, responsible for founding the religious philosophy of Thelema. He was also successful in various other...
unsuccessfully sued her and the publisher for libel over allegations of Black Magic made in her book.
Although she won the case, the situation profoundly affected her for the remainder of her life. Alcoholism
Alcoholism
Alcoholism is a broad term for problems with alcohol, and is generally used to mean compulsive and uncontrolled consumption of alcoholic beverages, usually to the detriment of the drinker's health, personal relationships, and social standing...
would soon overtake her many talents and the tragic Queen of the Fitzroy spent a good part of the last few decades of her life at the bar, (usually that of the Fitzroy Tavern
Fitzroy Tavern
The Fitzroy Tavern is a public house situated at 16 Charlotte Street in the Fitzrovia district of central London, England, to which it gives its name.It is currently owned by the Samuel Smith Brewery...
in Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia
Fitzrovia is a neighbourhood in central London, near London's West End lying partly in the London Borough of Camden and partly in the City of Westminster ; and situated between Marylebone and Bloomsbury and north of Soho. It is characterised by its mixed-use of residential, business, retail,...
), trading anecdotes for drinks.
Twenty-three years after her first book Laughing Torso was published, Hamnett, in poor health, released a follow up book aptly titled: Is She a Lady?.
Nina Hamnett died in 1956 from complications after falling out her apartment window and being impaled on the fence forty feet below. The great debate has always been whether or not it was a suicide attempt or merely a drunken accident. Her last words were, "Why don't they let me die?".
A biography, Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia, by Denise Hooker was published in 1986.
