THE BELFAST NEWS-LETTER

Belfast, Antrim, Northern Ireland

17 December 1956

(page 4)

OBITUARY.

MISS NINA HAMNETT.

Sculptress, painter and authoress.

Miss Nina Hamnett, the sculptress, painter and authoress, who fell from a window in her flat in Westbourne Terrace, Paddington, London, on Thursday, died in Paddington General Hospital yesterday.

Miss Hamnett was once described by Augustus John as one of the four best English women painters. At 15 she attended the Dublin School of Art, and before she was 20 she was in Paris and meeting Modigliani, Utrillo and Picasso.

In a London public house she once sold Augustus John a painting for which he paid in five pound notes.

With Osbert Sitwell she produced a satirical book on London statues. She regarded the statues of Charles I and James II as the two best in London.

Miss Hamnett was born in Tenby, South Wales, educated at the Royal School, Bath, and then studied art at the London School of Art, where she was a silver medallist. After the first world war she exhibited at many west end galleries.

Her book “Laughing Torso” was the subject of a sensational libel action in 1934, when the late Aleister Crowley alleged that it imputed that he had practiced “black magic.” He lost his action. Early this year Miss Hamnett, who was 65, published a book of reminiscences “Is She a Lady?”