Isabel Rawsthorne

Isabel Rawsthorne (1912 – 1992) was a British artists' model and painter. She is better known as the subject of paintings and sculptures by such prominent artists as Picasso, Giacometti and Derain than for her work as a painter. She was romantically linked with many members of the artistic bohemian society in which she flourished, including Francis Bacon and Georges Bataille, and was married thrice: to the journalist Sefton Delmer, and to the composers Constant Lambert and Alan Rawsthorne.

Life

She was born Isabel Nicholas in the East End of London, the daughter of a master mariner, but raised in Liverpool, where she studied at the Liverpool School of Art. Her early works do not survive. In the early 1930s, sculptor Jacob Epstein used her as a model, notably for his bronze bust "Isabel" (1933).

Her first husband was Sefton Delmer, a British journalist. They lived in Paris, where she modeled for Giacometti and Picasso. The marriage had deteriorated by 1945.

In 1947, Isabel married composer Constant Lambert, for whose final work, the ballet "Tiresias" (created for the Festival of Britain), she painted set scenery. During her marriage to Lambert, she was painting in a Neo-romantic style. Lambert died a few years later, in 1951.

She married another composer, Alan Rawsthorne, in 1952, the year after Lambert's death. Rawsthorne and Lambert had been drinking friends.

Isabel then became a model for Francis Bacon, who was a noted homosexual, yet is quoted by "Paris Match" as having said, "You know, I also made love to Isabel Rawsthorne, a very beautiful woman who was Derain's model and Georges Bataille's girlfriend." Bacon's most famous portrait of her is "Three Studies of Isabel Rawsthorne" (1966).

According to Norman Lebrecht, she "matched her husbands for drink, swore like a navvy and was a fine painter besides". She painted skeletons of birds, and later ballet dancers.

References

* http://www.francis-bacon.cx/themes/isabel.html
* http://arts.guardian.co.uk/news/story/0,11711,1233535,00.html
* http://www.musicalpointers.co.uk/reviews/liveevents/AlwynLambertRawsthorne.htm