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Charleston opens first Nina Hamnett retrospective
Nina Hamnett (1890-1956), Dancer (Rupert Doone 1903-1966), 1922-23. Oil on canvas, 45 x 29cm. Collection. Heritage Doncaster, Doncaster Council.
LEWES
.-Charleston reopened with the first major retrospective of the work of British artist Nina Hamnett (1890 1956), a central figure in the London and Paris art scenes of the early 20th century. Featuring works that span three decades, the exhibition showcases Hamnetts incredible eye for portraiture and reveal key aspects of her practice which has, in recent times, remained little known and unseen.
Born in Tenby, Wales, Hamnett was at the heart of the British-French exchange of art and ideas during the 1910s and 1920s and was a key point of connection between the Bloomsbury group, the Camden Town Group and the School of Paris. She became a celebrated artist in both London and Paris, exhibiting widely in solo and group shows, including those of The London Group and the New Englis
Nina Hamnett was ‘deadly serious about painting’, as she put it in
Laughing Torso, a collection of her reminiscences published in 1932. A photograph of her as a young woman in her studio shows her standing with confidence, obscuring her easel, in wide-legged crêpe trousers and sandals, a cigarette in hand, her expression both earnest and ironic. At art school, under the tutelage of William Nicholson, she learned still life, placing objects – everyday, domestic things: an inkwell, an hydra jug, a two-handled cup, a small glass of white wine – not-quite squarely within the frame, the objects cropped at their edges. She disobeyed the conventions of the genre: no luminous porcelain, no flowers; the paintings do not glow. Her palette was London rooftops on a grey afternoon, solid browns and gloomy greens reflecting the material conditions of the paintings’ setting: a wooden tabletop in a rented room in Fitzrovia. In portraiture, she went beyond formality, finding ways to conv