Nina Hamnett

Nina Hamnett, whose works are on sale at Philip Mould & Company, was a powerful proponent of the British avant-garde and throughout her early career was one of the most recognised artists on the London art scene. Her forthright and confident approach to painting, combined with her dashing disregard for gender constrictions, positions her as one of the most remarkable artists of the early twentieth century.

‘On February the fourteenth, 1890, I was born. Everybody was furious...’[1]

Born on Valentine’s Day 1890, Hamnett carried a spirit of romance and wonder with her throughout her life. She was born to parents George and Mary Hamnett in Pembrokeshire, Wales. From a young age, Hamnett showed a talent for drawing and painting but her early practice at art school was sporadic and dislocated due to her father’s military career which took the family from city to city.[2] From age thirteen, she attended art schools across Great Britain from Plymouth to Dublin to London before beginning her professional career in London.

In 1911, with the financial help of her grandparents, Hamnett set up a studio. It was based in a thriving artistic community, just around the corner from Walter Sickert and Roger Fry’s respective studios on Fitzroy Square, London. She set up her studio at 41 Grafton Street in 1911, the year sandwiched between Roger Fry’s two ground-breaking exhibitions of post-Impressionist art (1910 and 1912) held at the Grafton Galleries. The impact of these exhibitions on British sensibility cannot be overstated, and Hamnett was a stone’s throw from its source.

Around this date, Hamnett was introduced to members of the Bloomsbury Group. Roger Fry employed her to work for the Omega Workshops, a position that enabled her to earn a steady income through her creative means. Although she worked there between 1913 and 1919, Hamnett never fully shared the Omega Workshop’s passion for marrying domestic life with fine art, in fact, she didn’t much care for domestic life generally. As Judy Collins and Oriana Baddeley note in Five Woman Painters:

Nina Hamnett lived her life in a way associated with a 'masculine' form of independence; she had very few family ties, she was not dependent on anybody and nobody was dependent on her, she had no interest in home-making, cooking, and other domestic skills. She liked the social and communal aspects of pub life, she had a wide range of acquaintances rather than a few close friends, and she was quite capable of launching herself into strange company and making herself accepted.

Pubs and café provided a gateway to ideas that stretched far beyond those valued by her traditional Edwardian parents. Hamnett frequented these spaces, including The Café Royal in Piccadilly, which harboured artists and writers from Nancy Cunard and Oscar Wilde to William Nicholson and Dora Carrington, and was intent on assimilating into this creative community which fuelled her private practice.[3]

She continued to explore bohemian ideals and ventured to Paris for the first time in 1912. Bewitched by its modern magic, she moved to the French capital in 1914 where she settled in Montparnasse and attended Marie Wassilieff's academy. At Wassilieff’s, she received lessons from Fernand Leger and mingled with the likes of Amedeo Modigliani, Chaim Soutine, and Gertrude Stein. During one particularly drab life drawing class, the students encouraged Hamnett to model for them – her dance performance, which she improvised for the group, was such a hit that she continued to pose and dance for the class for weeks.[4] Hamnett’s image has since become as famous as her paintings. At this time, she was known as both an artist and a model, sitting for numerous artists including Gaudier-Brzeska's marble torso, which is now in the collection of the Tate.

One of Hamnett’s first solo exhibitions was held at the Eldar Gallery, London in 1918 and consisted mainly of portraits of figures she had met in Paris. Walter Sickert wrote the catalogue introduction: ‘Nina Hamnett had the luck to be born with the two complementary gifts that are needed for the equipment of the complete artist. She draws like a born sculptor and paints like a born painter.’ Hamnet, however, did not plan to remain in London – she valued her freedom too highly to remain restricted to one place. At the time of her exhibition, she wrote; ‘If I had some money and not my class I should leave at once (go abroad) and not return for at least five years. Perhaps I shall if I make some money out of my show.’[5] Within two years she returned to Paris, borrowing money from friends to enable her to move there more permanently. She made friends in Paris with other artist seeking bohemian inspiration, such as Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett-Haines. Capturing the effervescence of Paris in the roaring twenties, Hamnett’s paintings are a marker of the era:

My ambition is to paint psychological portraits that shall represent accurately the spirit of the age.[6]

In 1932, Hamnett penned her autobiography The Laughing Torso which chronicled her extraordinary life in dazzling detail and became a bestseller in the UK and the US. It details her love of all arts, music, theatre, literature, and her travels between Paris and London on the hunt for those at the forefront of the avant-garde. The onset of the Second World War in 1939 restricted her travel, and she turned her attention to the bohemian life offered in Soho, London.

Hamnett died in 1956, the year after the publication of her second autobiography Is She a Lady? A Problem in Autobiography. She is now recognised as a powerful proponent of British Modernism, and her work is held in prominent collections, including the Tate, London, and the National Portrait Gallery, London.

[1]. Hamnett, Laughing Torso. London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1932, p.1.

[2] J. Collins and O. Baddeley, Five Women Painters. London: Queen Anne Press, 1989, p. 58.

[3] D. Hooker, Nina Hamnett. London: Constable & Company Ltd, p. 48.

[4] D. Hooker, Nina Hamnett. London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1986, p. 74.

[5] N. Hamnett, Letter to C. K. Ogden. Courtesy of Michael Parkin; D. Hooker, Nina Hamnett. London: Constable & Company Ltd, 1986, p. 131.

[6] N. Hamnett. Interviewed in 1924.