Euphemia Lamb

Early life

Nina's father was Arthur Forrest. Nina claimed that she was born on a steamship bound for Bombay, but there is no independent verification of this. She was raised in Greenheys, a poor district of Manchester known as a centre for prostitution. Her working class accent, however, was not to everyone's taste, and Viva King, another Bohemian, said of one of Jacob Epstein's busts of Euphemia, "I fancy I can hear, through the open mouth, her ugly voice".

Henry Lamb

Nina Forrest met Henry Lamb in 1905 in Manchester, where he was at medical school. They left for London as soon as they could. Henry enrolled in the Chelsea School of Art and they attended the Friday Club run by Vanessa Stephen. Supposedly, Henry renamed Nina ″Euphemia″ because she reminded him of Saint Euphemia in the painting by Andrea Mantegna They married in May 1906 after she became pregnant, but she lost the baby due to a miscarriage.

Artists' model

Euphemia was one of the models who networked at the Café Royal before the First World War, occupying a grey area between professional model and prostitute. Her contemporaries included Betty May, Dolores, and Lilian Shelley, along with many other young women. She was slim, pale, and fair-haired and apparently able to adopt any pose that might be asked of her. Her husky voice and slightly androgynous appearance meant that she could pass for a young man, which she sometimes did. Augustus John commented to Henry Lamb, "she makes an irresistible boy".

Augustus John

In March 1907, Euphemia and Henry Lamb went to Paris to stay with Augustus John and Dorelia McNeill at Montparnasse. Henry became John's pupil and Euphemia his model. John was fascinated by Euphemia's appearance and her sexual behaviour, and he nicknamed her "Lobelia", a name he used quite openly with her husband. Dorelia became romantically interested in Henry, which John encouraged so that he could spend more time with Euphemia, though he denied any personal romantic interest in her.

Although John prized Euphemia as a model, he did not take her seriously otherwise, regarding her behaviour as quite eccentric and her stories fanciful. On one occasion, according to Euphemia, her penchant for dressing like a man had unfortunate consequences, she and John were arrested as homosexuals and she was required to undress in custody in order to prove she was a woman. She also claimed that she had a revolver and was prepared to shoot herself and her husband, and that she had caused the death of John's first wife Ida who had died in childbirth.

Battles with Henry forced Euphemia in the direction of Duncan Grant, whose relationships were usually homosexual, but he was repulsed by the complicated love life of the group, particularly John's encouragement of Dorelia's relationship with Henry, writing to Lytton Strachey, "That Lamb family sickens me", and referring to Euphemia as "the white haired whore". By the summer of 1907, Euphemia had effectively left Henry, although they did not divorce until 1928 when Henry wished to marry Pansy Pakenham.

John continued to follow Euphemia's liaisons with interest, reporting to Henry in August that Euphemia had "made the acquaintance of a number of nations" and the following year to Dorelia that "Lobelia had 6 men in her room last night, representing the six European powers".

Jacob Epstein

The sculptor Jacob Epstein created a number of busts of Euphemia in marble and bronze, the best known of which is the bronze bust in the Tate Gallery which the gallery dates to 1908, but which Epstein dated to 1911 in Let There Be Sculpture. Three studies of Euphemia are in the Leeds City Art Gallery.

Around 1910, Epstein completed for Lady Ottoline Morrell a garden figure of 53 inches (1,300 mm) for which Euphemia was the model. A plaster model of the work was exhibited in 1911 and a bronze of the torso completed in 1912.

Aleister Crowley

In Paris, Euphemia became the lover of the occultist Aleister Crowley; in 1908 they conspired to humiliate Crowley's male lover and acolyte Victor Neuburg by convincing him that Euphemia was in love with him while Crowley pressed him into visiting a brothel, thus making him unfaithful to her. Crowley gave Euphemia the name "Dorothy" in his Confessions and described her as "incomparably beautiful ... capable of stimulating the greatest extravagances of passion".

James Dickson Innes

In 1910, Euphemia met James Dickson Innes (1887–1914) at a cafe on the Boulevard du Montparnasse, and the two began an affair which was more intense for Innes than for Euphemia who never restricted her relationships to just one man. According to Euphemia, they travelled through southern France together. Innes was already suffering from the tuberculosis that eventually killed him. In 1910 or 1911, with Augustus John, he established a small artistic commune at Nant Ddu cottage in north Wales. Visitors included John and Dorelia, Derwent Lees, Ian Strang, and Euphemia, who Innes painted against the background of Arenig Fawr. It was said that when the relationship was over, Innes buried a silver casket of love letters from Euphemia on the summit of Arenig, the mountain in some way representing the scale of Innes' unrequited love for her.

Affairs

Among Euphemia's other lovers were the poet Francis Macnamara and the author Henri-Pierre Roché.

Later life

Little is recorded about Euphemia's later life. In 1934, she married the painter Edward Grove, but they divorced in 1942 or 1943. Euphemia died in 1957.