Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia
“A lady was the last thing I wanted to be.”
Nina Hamnett was an early twentieth-century artist as famous for her flamboyant personality as she was for her work. With a colourful life lived at the centre of the avant-garde circles of London and Paris, she embraced the spirit of the time and was nicknamed the Queen of Bohemia.
Hamnett was born in Tenby, a small town on the southwest coast of Wales, on Valentine’s Day, 1890 - the eldest of the four children of George Edward Hamnett and Mary Elizabeth De Blois.
On February the fourteenth, 1890, I was born. Everybody was furious, especially my Father, who still is. As soon as I became conscious of anything I was furious too, at having been born a girl; I have since discovered that it has certain advantages.
George was a military officer, and Hamnett’s schooling was often interrupted as the family moved with each posting. As a student at an academy for wealthy young ladies, she played the lead role in Jack and the Beanstalk and enjoyed the spotlight.
I was called for over and over again… Some rich people wanted to get me an engagement in London and others to dance at concerts but alas! my family again. “Ladies do not go on the stage.” I was furious, besides a lady was the last thing I wanted to be.
When she was fifteen, with her parents seriously affected by a national financial crisis and now living with her grandmother in London, her father encouraged her to attend Polytechnic to train to become a post office clerk. But, with poor reports and an evident passion for drawing, her grandmother agreed to send her to art school instead. In 1906, she enrolled at the Pelham School of Art, but while she was serious about an art career, it appeared to her that her fellow students were simply killing time before marriage. The following year, she transferred to the London School of Art, where her tutor, William Nicholson, encouraged her talent for still life.
Here at last was paradise.
In 1911, with financial assistance from an uncle and two aunts, Hamnett, now twenty-one, moved to a studio on Grafton Street, Bloomsbury - located not far from Bloomsbury Group artist Roger Fry’s studio in Fitzroy Square. Bloomsbury was home to a vibrant creative community, and there she mingled with other artists such as Walter Sickert, Wyndham Lewis, Mark Gertler, Dora Carrington and her Welsh neighbour Augustus John. Enjoying her independence, she cut her hair short and experimented with her clothing.
I wore in the daytime a clergyman’s hat, a check coat, and a skirt with red facings … white stockings and men’s dancing pumps and was stared at in the Tottenham Court Road. One had to do something to celebrate one’s freedom and escape from home.
Two years later, encouraged by a friend, Hamnett visited Roger Fry to ask for work at the Omega Workshops, a decorative design cooperative established by himself and fellow Bloomsbury Group artist Vanessa Bell. She described Fry as a charming grey-haired man and the pair became intimate friends.
Vanessa Bell and Duncan Grant worked sometimes at the Omega Workshops. She was very beautiful and had a wonderful deep voice. I used to go home and attempt to lower my voice too.
In early 1914, Hamnett moved to Paris to study at Marie Wassilieff's art academy. One evening, dining alone at La Rotonde restaurant, she met the Italian painter Amedeo Modigliani, who introduced her to Spanish painter and sculptor Picasso and French poet and playwright Jean Cocteau. With her unconventional and flamboyant behaviour and an apparent disregard for social norms, she was soon accepted into Parisian art circles.
With a little too much to drink she could be disconcerting – as when she would boast that Modigliani said she had the best tits in Europe and pull up her old jersey to show them off.1
She moved in with Modigliani at La Ruche, his home in the Montparnasse district of the city. The large residence housed many other artists and writers, including her future husband, the Norwegian artist Edgar de Bergen, who later, believing his name too German, changed it to Roald Kristian.
Sadly, with the outbreak of the First World War, Hamnett was forced to move back to London. Kristian moved with her, and they rented a studio in Camden Town. They were married, and Hamnett returned to work at the Omega Workshops and taught an evening class at the Westminster Technical Institute.
But she soon realised her marriage to Kristian was a mistake. Their son, born in March 1915, died in infancy, and the couple separated. In 1917, when Kristian was arrested for failing to register as a foreigner in wartime, Hamnett moved back to Bloomsbury. She rented a studio once occupied by Augustus John and Wyndham Lewis and concentrated on portraiture. Her sitters included many of the relevant art figures of the time, such as dancer and author Constance Stewart-Richardson and writer Osbert Sitwell.
My ambition is to paint psychological portraits that shall accurately represent the spirit of the age.
Following the death of Modigliani - from meningitis, aged just thirty-five - Hamnett returned to Paris and her late friend's studio. She was the city's most well-known British female artist by this time. At the centre of the Parisian bohemian and art scenes, she mingled with other artists, dancers and writers such as Christopher Wood, Rudolf Valentino, Rupert Doone, and James Joyce.
I think writers are so much luckier than painters. In the first place it costs them nothing to write. To paint costs money. If one paints a good picture, even a very good one, it may have a success at an exhibition and be sold, and it is never heard of again until one is dead, or perhaps not even then. If a writer writes a book its reputation, if it is a good one, goes on for years and the writer continues to get money for it.
In preparation for an exhibition at the Claridge Gallery in 1926, Hamnett returned to London, where she remained, making the Fitzrovia district of the city her home. She regularly frequented the Fitzroy Tavern with her Welsh neighbours Augustus John and writer Dylan Thomas.
We have become, Nina, the sort of people our parents warned us about.
Augustus John
Laughing Torso, the first instalment of a memoir of her life, was published in 1932. A who's who of her bohemian circles, it was a best seller in the UK and US. Sadly, despite this success, by the mid-1930s, Hamnett’s drinking had come at the expense of her art. Doing very little painting and not caring for personal hygiene, she propped up Fitzrovia and Soho bars and exchanged anecdotes of her glory days for free drinks.
In 1955, Is She A Lady? A Problem in Autobiography, the second instalment of her memoir, was published. Tragically, just a year later, she fell (or jumped) from the window of her flat onto railing spikes below. She died in hospital three days later.
Miss Hamnett was a complete success as a person; generous, good humoured, loyal, and witty.
Times Obituary
Thank you for reading! If you enjoyed this biography, please like and/or share. And, as always, I would love to know your thoughts in the comments. If you wish, you can also Become a Member and/or read the suggested Beyond Bloomsbury posts below. Until next time…
Images:
Images on Beyond Bloomsbury are usually credited. I conduct thorough picture research, but please let me know if you believe a credit needs to be added or corrected. Thank you!
Sources and Recommended Reading:
Foster, Alicia, Nina Hamnett (Eiderdown Books, 2021)
Grimes, Teresa, Collins, Judith and Baddeley, Oriana, Five Women Painters (Lennard Publishing, 1989)
Hamnett, Nina, Laughing Torso - Reminiscences of Nina Hamnett (Constable & Co, 1932)
Hamnett, Nina, Is She a Lady? A Problem in Autobiography (Allan Wingate, 1955)
Hooker, Denise, Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia (Constable & Co, 1988)
Denise Hooker, Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia (Constable, 1988)
I love her work I have just finished reading 'Is She a Lady?' She was often drinking in the Fitzroy Tavern some interesting descriptions of London life.
I love Nina Hamnett's work - thank you for this great account of her fascinating life. There are a few of her drawings at Charleston which convey so much meaning about the people she's chosen to portray. She's definitely one of my favourites in the group.