Nina hamnett biography

artist, modernist, and the Queen of Bohemia

Nina Hamnett (1890-1956) was born in Tenby, south-west Wales. She endured a largely unhappy childhood, but her skill at drawing enabled her to escape her miserable life at home (rather like her near-contemporary Dora Carrington).

She studied at the Pelham Art School and the London School of Art between 1906 and 1910.

In 1911 she launched herself into the London art world on the strength of a fifty pound advance on an inheritance from her uncle and a stipend of two shillings and sixpence a week from her aunts.

Nina hamnett biography wikipedia

There she socialised in the Cafe Royal with the likes of Augustus John, Walter Sickert, and Henri Gaudier-Brzeska. She became very popular as a result of her high spirits, her devil-may-care attitude, and her sexual promiscuity.

Like other women at the time revelling in a newfound independence, she had her hair cut short in a ‘crophead’ style (what we would now call a basin cut) and she wore eccen