 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.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.