Bolton AES Lecture - Natacha Rambova: Artist, Actress, Egyptologist
19th May 2026 - 7.30 pm
Speaker:
Ian Tumble - Chairman of Bolton Archaeology and Egyptology Society
Ian stepped in this month with the story of Natacha Rambova from the early 20th Century. Natacha was born Winifred Kimball Shaughnessy (aka “Wink”). She was named after her mother and was descended from one of the Mormon founders. Her mother remarried twice into artistic, influential and rich families and so Wink led a materially-privileged, eccentric and creative upbringing. As a teenager she was sent to boarding school in England where she was exposed to European culture, seeing Anna Pavlova in Paris and developing a fascination for Greek mythology.
Winifred became a talented ballerina. Through this interest she got work in the film industry in Hollywood involving historical research and costume design for films. It was during this period that she changed her name to the more Russian-sounding Natacha Rambova. She married Rudolph Valentino in 1922 and they were a celebratory couple until their divorce in 1926.
Rambova married again, in 1932, to Spanish aristocrat Alvaro de Urzaiz and they moved to Mallorca, which was popular at the time with artists and intellectuals. Bolton’s own Annie Barlow lived there herself around the same time. And it was with Urzaiz that Natacha first toured Egypt, visiting the ancient sites, meeting Howard Carter and becoming fascinated with Ancient Egypt and convincing herself that she had been Egyptian in a former life.
When the Spanish Civil War broke out, her husband joined the fascists and Natacha moved first to France, then back to New York when the Nazis invaded. She became a supporter of the Bollingen Foundation (an educational foundation, funded by Mellon) and got funding herself to go back to Egypt to study symbolism in tomb inscriptions and other Egyptian artwork. She worked closely with Alexandre Piankoff. He had translated funerary texts into French and she set to work translating them into English. While Alexandre was most interested in the hieroglyphs, Natacha was more interested in the imagery.
Partly through her good connections in the world of Egyptian archaeology (e.g. Howard Carter), Natacha also built up a good collection of artifacts (some excellent specimens, with a few fakes) and we looked at some of her collection, with similar items form the Bolton Museum collection in Ian’s talk.
Rambova continued her research into symbolism in the ancient world for the rest of her life. She perhaps had some strange beliefs (for example around the Egypt and Atlantis myths) but she did make significant contributions to the research as well as donating her collection of Egyptian artifacts to the Museum of Fine Arts at the University of Utah.
So it was thank you once again to Ian for pulling another fascinating talk out of the bag for the Society and we’ll be looking forward to welcoming Joann Fletcher back for the last talk of the 2025/26 year.
Interested in coming along to a lecture?
See the current year’s lecture programme here:
Or find out more about membership of Bolton’s Archaeology and Egyptology Society here: