Nina Hamnett, ‘Portrait of a Woman’ 1917

I recently visited a fine retrospective of the work of Nina Hamnett at Charleston, East Sussex.

Born of military stock in Tenby, Wales in 1890, Hamnett rebelled against formal education and found a haven in art. She studied at the Pelham Art School and then the London School of Art, earned money as a life model and found a job as a designer at the Bloomsbury-run Omega Workshops.

Hamnett embarked on a flamboyant life of clubs and cafes, pubs and parties in London and Paris. Cutting a dash in her modernist bob, she socialised with Fry and Pound; Modigliani and Picasso; Diaghilev, Stein and Cocteau. She sang sea shanties to Gide, danced for Satie, ate caviar with Stravinsky and took laudanum with the occultist Aleister Crowley. She drank prodigiously, had wild affairs with both genders, and jigged nude on a restaurant table in Montparnasse.

‘A lady was the last thing I wanted to be.’

Having read of Hamnett’s reputation as ‘the Queen of Bohemia’, it was surprising to encounter her work.

Her still lives are quiet, austere and understated. Jugs, cups, notepads and newspapers are carefully assembled on the table; a glass throws a shadow; a book asks to be picked up. These are close-cropped, intense meditations on familiar objects and everyday routines.

Her portraits are similarly reflective. A woman in her study reads intently, her head supported on one hand, a bottle of wine at her side. A man in a shirt and tie reclines on a bed and looks us straight in the eye. A female student in a smart blue dress rests a protective hand on her notebook. A formidable landlady sits behind a defensive wall of lamp, cup and saucer, music stand and rolling pin. A slender, fine-boned male dancer regards us with pursed lips.

Ignoring social status, Hamnett seems intent on revealing something of the sitter’s interior life. We are meeting each of them uninhibited and alone.

‘My ambition is to paint psychological portraits that shall accurately represent the spirit of the age.’

The dancer and author Lady Constance Stewart-Richardson had developed a scandalous reputation for wearing risqué costumes. Hamnett painted her serious, soberly dressed and pensive.

‘They all flocked to my portrait expecting to see an almost nude woman. They were bitterly disappointed, and Constance and I laughed.’

I left the exhibition considering the distance between reputation and reality.

Hamnett was indeed a hedonist, an icon of the Roaring Twenties. But, as the show reveals, she was also a thoughtful, psychological painter with a penetrating insight into her subjects.

In my career I have known great wits that were entirely serious about their work. I have been acquainted with cavalier characters that created little of any worth. I have encountered luminous talent with the disposition of an accountant. We must learn to separate the painting from the performance; the personality from the product; the life from the lifestyle.

Sadly in her later years Hamnett spent too much time propping up the bar at the Fitzroy Tavern, and her career went into decline. She died in 1956, having fallen from her bedsit window and been impaled on the railings below. She was 66.

Myself, 1920, Photograph of Nina Hamnett (London Library)

'Sometimes I want you close.
Sometimes I want my space.
Just know I'm gonna call if I need you.
But it's not my job to please you.
Never been your average girl.’

Mahalia, 'Simmer’ (W Hector / J Harding / F Joseph / D Ogulu / J Christian / M Burkmar / K Radical)

No 341