In 1910, she went to the Slade School of Art in central London where she subsequently won a scholarship and several other prizes; her fellow students included Dorothy Brett, Paul Nash, Christopher R. W. Nevinson and Mark Gertler. All at one time or another were in love with her, as was Nash's younger brother John Nash, who hoped to marry her. Gertler pursued Carrington for a number of years, and they had a brief sexual relationship during the years of the First World War.