Nina Hamnett, queen of Bohemia

Nina Hamnett (1890-1956), talented artist and legendary queen of bohemia in London and Paris, was immortalized in the paintings, sculptures, novels, poems, diaries and memoirs of her contemporaries; while her portraits of her famous friends are amongst her finest work. Her friendships with Sickret, Augustus John, Wyndham Lewis, the Sitwells, Nancy Cunard and the 'Bloomsberries' cut across the rival artistic coteries of the time. Her many lovers included Gaudier-Brzeska and Roger Fry. In Paris before the First World War, where she danced naked at studio parties, she was a close friend of Modigliani. Her talents as a painters and draughtswoman made her an important member of the English modern movement and she was a mainstay of Fry's Omega Workshops. Nina was a best-known British woman painter in Paris in the twenties, friendly with Ford Madox Ford, Joyce, and Gertrude Stein as well as Princess Violette Murat, Cocteau, Radiguet, Satie, Stravinsky and Les Six. Back in England she lived in the composer Peter Warlock's bizarre household, exhibited widely and collaborated on a book with Osbert Sitwell. The book, which is largely based on personal interviews and original research, is an account of Nina's life, her work and the bohemian world she lived in.