Nina Hamnett

(British, 1890-1956)

Rooftops 53.4 x 36.8 cm. (21 x 14 1/2 in.)

Footnotes

Provenance
The Artist, from whom acquired by
Frank Griffith, thence by descent
Private Collection, U.K.

Nina Hamnett was born in Wales and studied at the London School of Art and also in Paris. During, and following, her studies she forged friendships with a wide circle of the most respected creatives of the time including Henri Gaudier-Brzeska (for whom she posed nude), Ezra Pound, Pablo Picasso and Jean Cocteau, in addition to sexual relationships with Amadeo Modigliani and Roger Fry to name but two. She gained notoriety for a wildly unconventional attitude (having once danced naked on a café table in Montparnasse 'just for the hell of it'), was a heavy drinker and openly bisexual and promiscuous, all of which earned her the informal title of 'The Queen of Bohemia'.

Yet in spite of her flamboyant reputation, she was a serious artist in her own right and greatly admired by Walter Sickert, who attempted (and failed) to guide her professional development. Her work was exhibited widely during the First World War at both the Royal Academy in London and the Salon d'Automne in Paris and in 1932, she published Laughing Torso (an auto-biographical account of her controversial life) which became a bestseller in the U.K. and U.S. Sadly, however, in the years that followed she was consumed by alcoholism and met an untimely end in 1956 having fallen out of her apartment window and become impaled on the railings below.

One of the more interesting characters of the period, Hamnett's work is rarely seen on the open market with the present example having previously been in the collection of her artist friend Frank Griffith (1889-1979) whom she met in Paris.