1. Nina Hamnett was a Welsh artist and writer, and an expert on sailors' shanties, who became known as the Queen of Bohemia.
11 Facts About Nina Hamnett
1. 2.
Nina Hamnett was sent to a private boarding school at Westgate-on-Sea before moving on, aged 12, to the Royal School for Daughters of Officers of the Army in Bath, Somerset from 1902 to 1905.
3.
Nina Hamnett's father, having been dishonourably discharged from the army, took work as a taxi driver.
4.
Nina Hamnett's education had to be funded by her aunts and by a loan against a future bequest.
5.
Nina Hamnett went on to have a love affair with Brzeska, and later with Amedeo Modigliani and Roger Fry.
6.
Nina Hamnett would remain married for forty years, but her relationship with her husband lasted only three years.
7.
Nina Hamnett's work was well regarded by Walter Sickert, who endeavoured to advise her on her painting, but she lacked his dedication and revelled in not taking advice.
8.
Flamboyantly unconventional, and openly bisexual, Nina Hamnett once danced nude on a Montparnasse cafe table just for the "hell of it".
9.
In 1932 Nina Hamnett published Laughing Torso, a tale of her bohemian life, which became a bestseller in the UK and US.
10.
Nina Hamnett died in 1956 from complications after falling out of her apartment window and being impaled on the fence forty feet below.
11.
In November 2019, the Fitzrovia Chapel hosted an exhibition called Nina Hamnett - Everybody was Furious.