Nina Hamnett (Queen of Bohemia)

'What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor' (Wet Paint Films) (2011), written and directed by Chris Ward

Nina Hamnett (14 February 1890 – 16 December 1956) was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' chanteys, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.

Early life

Hamnett was born in the small coastal town of Tenby, Pembrokeshire, Wales, and attended the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army from 1902 to 1905. From 1906 to 1907 she studied at the Pelham Art School and then at the London School of Art until 1910. In 1914 she went to Montparnasse, Paris to study at Marie Vassilieff's Academy.

While studying in London she met and posed for Henri Gaudier-Brzeska who sculpted a series of nude bronzes. During this period she became friendly with Olivia Shakespear and Ezra Pound. She went on to have a love affair with Brzeska, and later with Modigliani and Roger Fry, (allegedly).

On her first night in the Bohemian community she went to the café La Rotonde where the man at the next table introduced himself as "Modigliani, painter and Jew". In addition to making close friends with Amedeo Modigliani, Pablo Picasso, Serge Diaghilev, and Jean Cocteau, she stayed for a while at La Ruche, where many of the leading members of the avant-garde lived at the time. In Montparnasse she also met her future husband, the Norwegian artist Roald Kristian.

Flamboyant lifestyle

Flamboyantly unconventional, and openly bisexual, Hamnett once danced nude on a Montparnasse café table just for the "hell of it". She drank heavily, was sexually promiscuous, and kept numerous lovers and close associations within the artistic community. Very quickly, she became a well-known bohemian personality throughout Paris and modeled for many artists. Her reputation soon reached back to London, where for a time, she went to work making or decorating fabrics, clothes, murals, furniture, and rugs at the Omega Workshops, which was directed by Roger Fry, Vanessa Bell, and Duncan Grant.

Her artistic creations were widely exhibited during World War I, including at the Royal Academy in London as well as the Salon d'Automne in Paris. Back in England, she taught at the Westminster Technical Institute from 1917 to 1918. After divorcing Kristian, she took up with another free spirit, composer E. J. Moeran.

From the mid-1920s until the end of World War II, the area known as Fitzrovia was London's main Bohemian artistic centre. The place took its name from the popular Fitzroy Tavern on the corner of Charlotte and Windmill Streets that formed the area's centre. Home of the café life in Fitzrovia, it was Hamnett's favourite hangout as well as that of her friend from her home town, Augustus John, and later another Welshman, the poet Dylan Thomas.

Later life

In 1932 Hamnett published Laughing Torso, a tale of her bohemian life, which became a bestseller in the UK and US. The notorious occultist Aleister Crowley unsuccessfully sued her and the publisher for libel over allegations of black magic made in her book.

Although she won the case, the situation profoundly affected her for the remainder of her life. Alcoholism would soon overtake her many talents and the tragic "Queen of the Fitzroy" spent a good part of the last few decades of her life at the bar, (usually that of the Fitzroy Tavern), trading anecdotes for drinks.

Twenty-three years after her first book Laughing Torso was published, Hamnett, in poor health, released a follow up book aptly titled: Is She a Lady?

Hamnett died in 1956 from complications after falling out of her apartment window and being impaled on the fence forty feet below. The great debate has always been whether or not it was a suicide attempt or merely a drunken accident. Her last words were "Why don't they let me die?"[4]

A biography, Nina Hamnett: Queen of Bohemia, by Denise Hooker was published in 1986. In 2011, Hamnett was the subject of a short film by writer/director Chris Ward 'What Shall We Do With The Drunken Sailor' starring Siobhan Fahey.

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The Little Tea Party: Nina Hamnett and Roald Kristian 1915-6 Walter Richard Sickert 1860-1942 Purchased 1941 http://www.tate.org.uk/art/work/N05288

This drawing is a preliminary study for the painting, The Little Tea Party: Nina Hamnett and Roald Kristian 1915–16 (Tate N05288, fig.1). The focus is the seated pose of Edgar de Bergen, also known as Roald Kristian, recording the position of his arms and legs and the shadows made by the folds in his clothes. His face is sketched in a very cursory fashion, as is the headless figure of Nina Hamnett seated beside him on the chaise-longue. To the right there is the suggestion of a side table with a cup or mug on it. The background has been left completely blank. Another sketch, The Little Tea Party c.1915–16 (Huddersfield Art Gallery),1 in pencil, pen and ink, is a fuller description of the compositional elements of the picture and the individual sitters. In that drawing, Sickert has overlaid an initial blue pencil layout with finer detail in pen and ink. The appearance of the sofa and the vertical stripes of the wallpaper are recorded, but the still-life objects on the table on the right are not described. Other known studies related to the painting include a watercolour (private collection),2 and a pencil drawing on buff paper of Edgar de Bergen (private collection).3 The latter is inscribed ‘De Bergen’ and is a detailed transcription of the appearance of the sitter, particularly his face and arms. In the drawing, de Bergen looks directly at the artist or viewer whereas in the final painting he stares away into space, suggesting the same sense of isolation present in Ennui c.1914 (Tate N03846). There is no known corresponding sketch of Hamnett, perhaps because Sickert was more familiar with her and had sketched her on previous occasions.4 There is also a watercolour study (private collection)5 of a couple seated side by side on a couch that has a similar compositional format.

Also known as

Roald Kristian

primary name: Kristian, Roald

other name: Bergen, Edgar de

Details

individual; printmaker; Norwegian; Male

Life dates

1893-c.1918 Biography Associated with the Bloomsbury Group, husband of Nina Hamnett.

Added to Geni by Janet Milburn 10/10/20 as proof of her marriage to Roald Kristian, a.k.a. Edgar de Bergen.