Isabel Rawsthorne

Isabel Lambert / Isabel Rawsthorne
Photograph by John Deakin c.1966–67.
Born	Isabel Nicholas (1912-07-10)10 July 1912 London, England, United Kingdom
Died	27 January 1992(1992-01-27) Essex, England, United Kingdom
Nationality	British
Education	Liverpool College of Art, Royal Academy
Known for	painting, drawing and ballet/opera design

Isabel Rawsthorne, also known as Isabel Lambert, (1912 – 1992) was a British painter, designer and occasional artists' model. During the war she worked in Black Propaganda. She was intimate with many members of the artistic bohemian society in which she flourished, including Jacob Epstein, Alberto Giacometti and Francis Bacon, and was married three times; to the journalist Sefton Delmer, and to the composers Constant Lambert and Alan Rawsthorne.

The life which became famous for its love affairs with extraordinary artists was governed by a love affair with art itself. Born Isabel Nicholas, the daughter of a master mariner, in the East End of London, she was raised in Liverpool. She studied at the Liverpool College of Art, won a scholarship to the Royal Academy in London and spent two years in the studio of the sculptor Jacob Epstein.

Rawsthorne's first show was a sell-out and by September 1934 she was living in Paris. She worked with André Derain and lived and travelled for a time with Balthus and his wife. She was painted several times by Derain and Pablo Picasso. In 1936 she married her first husband, foreign correspondent for the Daily Express, Sefton Delmer. The travel, parties and luxurious apartment in the Place Vendôme, never replaced her Left Bank life, however; and most days she made the long walk there and back. A lifelong Socialist, she visited Spain while Delmer was reporting the Spanish Civil War.