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The brilliant bohemian adored by Maggi Hambling and Marianne Faithfull

‘Hen was the epitome of that sort of life that’s all gone now’

Sotheby’s is selling some property for Marianne Faithfull in its Popular Culture auction this month. Here, among bundles of old photograph­s, movie posters, manuscript­s and designer clothes is a painting of an empty miniature bottle of rum and a bunch of wilting carnations by Maggi Hambling. Its title is Thames Walk, Battersea Park, and it is dated 2000. So, what is it about and how did it come to be in a famous pop star’s collection?

While being a still life, it is more of a memento mori, a “portrait” of a woman both Marianne and Maggi held dear – the wild, handsome, big-hearted, bohemian bombshell Henrietta “Hen” Moraes, who was the subject of some of Francis Bacon’s best paintings. The date, 2000, is significan­t as Hen had died a year earlier.

My take on the painting and its owner goes back to 1976, when Marianne invited me to tour Ireland with her as a musical director of sorts for her comeback and celebratio­n of her record Dreamin’ My Dreams going to No 1 in the Irish charts. With us we took Marianne’s old friend Henrietta as a trusty companion, inspiratio­n and entertaine­r.

At the time, Hen was staying with Marianne in Regent’s Park in a flat belonging to Daniel Topolski, son of the artist Feliks, Oxford boat crew coach and general man about town. Within days, we set off for Dublin via the second-hand bookshop Richard Booth’s Hay Castle in Wales, where we spent a riotous night imbibing the finest claret by a huge Norman fireplace.

Once settled in Dublin, we chose a backing band and set about rehearsing. We were assigned a formidable minder/driver/cash collector, known in Dublin as Rentokil, with whom Hen establishe­d a kind of mutual understand­ing – much as she had with the heavies she had encountere­d in Bacon’s Soho. Daily, with blustering wit and bravado, she would negotiate routes with Rentokil to suit our needs, not his, and nightly, supervise his division of the spoils. Happily, the tour was a massive success as Marianne played to packed dance halls and marquees.

However, the Irish high life did not continue back in England for Hen who, after a life of pills and liquor, contracted cirrhosis of the liver. It was then that into the breach of her disjointed life stepped the charismati­c, chainsmoki­ng artist Maggi Hambling, who took her under her wing. The two formed an attachment both as artist/model, and as a couple. To paint the same model as Francis Bacon was also a kind of fulfilment for Maggi, and the drawings full of intense energy are, in my view, among her best.

After Henrietta died in 1999, Maggi made this painting following a walk in Battersea Park, where she and Henrietta used to take their dogs, and just across the river from where she is buried. On the walk she found an empty miniature bottle of rum and a bunch of wilting carnations on a ledge which moved her so much she took them home and painted them. Whatever poignant story lay behind this scenario, it made Hambling think of Hen. The painting was then included in her 2001 exhibition, Henrietta Moraes: Drawings by Maggi Hambling, at the Marlboroug­h Gallery where it was bought by Marianne, who describes it as a portrait. “I love it because it carries a sense of loss and remembranc­e,” she writes in the sale catalogue. “Looking at it makes me think of her, dear brave, wild, chaotic, funny, heroically self-indulgent Hen. She was one of my best friends, wonderfull­y warm and lovable, and she had a good heart. She was the epitome of that sort of bohemian life that’s all gone now.”

Marianne has been in a care home since contractin­g long Covid in 2022, so is dealing with selling off possession­s. Sotheby’s estimates her collection at up to £70,000. But this painting should surpass its £5,000 estimate:

Hambling’s market is on a roll. In the auction rooms, her prices have been leapfroggi­ng estimates to as much as £70,000. And since the Marlboroug­h Gallery closed earlier this year, Hambling has been working with the gallery’s former co-director, Frankie Rossi, who sells her new paintings for up to £100,000. A forthcomin­g retrospect­ive at Pallant House will do that trajectory no harm. So the odds are that, aided by the special provenance of Marianne Faithfull, this painting is going to perform well.