Thora Dardel (1899–1995)

Thora Dardel, née Klinckowström, was born to an aristocratic Swedish family. Her father Axel von Klinckowström was a writer, scientists, and polar explorer. She grew up on the family estate and as a young woman, studied art in Stockholm and Copenhagen. In 1919, she went with her art student brother Harald to Paris, intending to become a sculptor, and got to know Nils Dardel, a Swedish painter, and a circle of well-known artists, including Isadora Duncan and Jean Cocteau. She married Dardel and had a daughter. During the 1920s, she worked as a reporter and photographer for the weekly Swedish magazine Bonniers
Veckotidning; she photographed Tristan Tzara, Moïse Kisling, and other artists for her work. Both Nils Dardel and Amadeo Modigliani painted portraits of her. She was thought to be the model for the heroine Svea in Raymond Radiguet's novel The Devil in the Flesh (1923). Her first novel, Konfektasken, was published in 1924. She returned to Sweden in 1932, and after a divorce from her first husband, remarried to Mac Hamilton. Her memoirs, Jag for till Paris (I Went to Paris, 1941), offer a valuable portrait of bohemian life in the City of Light. She also wrote a biography of Nils Dardel.