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Manner of Nina Hamnett (1890-1956) Two women with babyinscribed to the reverse oil on canvas86cm x 81cm Provenance:The collection of the late Eric Stevens, removed from Hampstead, LondonSale; Cheffins, Art & Design, 11 October 2018, lot 363Widely known as the ‘Queen of Bohemia’, Welsh artist, writer and authority on sailors’ shanties, Nina Hamnett was a Vesuvius of both talent and character.Born to a military family in Tenby, Wales, Hamnett enjoyed a privileged childhood, attending a private boarding school on the Kent coast and later in Somerset. However, her father’s dishonourable discharge from the army and his subsequent employment as a taxi driver appears to have been a seismic event in Hamnett’s early life. Although she was able to continue her education, due to financial support from other family members, her father’s change in circumstance allowed Hamnett to liberate herself from the constraints of middle-class expectations and affectations. A lady, she claimed, was the last thing she ever wanted to be.After training in London, in 1914 Hamnett moved to Montparnasse, Paris, to attend the academy of Marie Vassilieff. In Paris, Hamnett dedicated herself to hedonism and became close friends with a number of influential cultural figures, including Modigliani, Picasso, and Cocteau. Tales of this fiercely vibrant and openly bisexual sybarite soon spread back to England and upon her return she was invited to work at the Omega Workshop with Bell, Fry and Grant where she produced a number of textiles, murals, furniture and rugs.Although prodigiously talented, Hamnett was a reluctant artist with a baffling disregard for her own artistic gifts. She received robust advice and encouragement from both Sickert and Fry, who were amongst her most ardent supporters. Revelling in her reputation as a libertine, however, Hamnett often chose pleasure over artistic rigour and as such, her output suffered. Indeed, this is noted in her seminal memoir Laughing Torso (1932), which recalls a number of carousals across Paris and Fitzrovia, including dancing for Satie, hiding from Modigliani and singing shanties to Cocteau. Hamnett’s life was cut tragically short in 1956 when she fell from the window of her Paddington flat. Accounts of this incident vary with some claiming that she was impaled on the railings below. Whether the fall was a tragic accident, a drunken stumble or a deliberate act remains in question.The present lot is an excellent example of Hamnett’s works which are typified by their contemplative qualities and their meditations on everyday life. Although quiet and still, one can imagine that her sitters have a fully realised internal life.

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