Maggi Hambling | Artist | East West Bank Art Program

One of Britain’s most distinguished artists, Maggi Hambling is best known for her uncompromising portraiture and public work sculptures. Born and raised in Suffolk, where she works from her studio for the last 60 years, Hambling studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing, then at the Ipswich School of Art, Camberwell, and the Slade School of Art. Painted from life and memory of her oceanside studio, her recent landscapes, including her most well-known “Wall of Water” series, capture a turbulent world, evoking the brutal force of nature through crashing waves and stormy seas. Her portrait paintings and sculpture first brought her to the public eye, as frank (and not necessarily flattering), confrontations of the facts of existence. The portraits infamously and fearlessly painted those closest to her at each stage of life, even as they lay dying, positioning Hambling and her subjects at the intersection of life and death. In 1980-81, Hambling became the first Artist in Residence at the National Gallery in London. In 1998, she was commissioned to create the first memorial to Oscar Wilde outside of his native Suffolk, A Conversation with Oscar Wilde, and she has gone on to create two further works of public memorial: Scallop (2003), for composer Benjamin Britten, and A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft (2020).

Hambling’s works are in the permanent collections of the National Portrait Gallery; the British Museum; Tate Britain, the National Gallery, Somerset House; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; as well as the Met Museum in NYC; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art; The Hermitage, St. Petersburg; the National Gallery of Australia; and the Central Academy of Fine Art Museum in Beijing. Read more