Maggi Hambling CBE

About Maggi Hambling CBE

Maggi Hambling studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing from 1960 under Cedric Morris, then at Ipswich School of Art (1962–4), Camberwell (1964-7), and finally the Slade School of Art graduating in 1969.  In 1980, she became the first Artist in Residence at the National Gallery, London.

Hambling's style tends towards the expressionistic, with her portraits often completed during live sittings and others painted later, partly from memory.  In the 1980s, she turned more to painting landscapes, most especially of the area around Suffolk where she lives.  More recently her canvases have been more abstract, often including highlights of vivid colour, in particular her dramatic Seascapes of the North Sea.

In 1995, she was awarded the Jerwood Painting Prize along with Patrick Caulfield. and, in the same year, she was awarded an OBE for her services to painting.

In 1998 and in 2006, she collaborated with IAP Fine Art, London, to publish editions of silk-screen prints of her portraits of Jarman, Melly and Fry (launched by Stephen Fry and George Melly) to raise money for the Terrence Higgins Trust, helping people with HIV and AIDS. In the late 1990s Hambling had an relationship with the 'Soho beauty' Henrietta Moraes as Moraes' life was drawing to a close. Hambling described her as her muse.

In 2003 Hambling was commissioned to produce a sculpture to commemorate Benjamin Britten. The result was Scallop, a pair of oversized, 12 ft (3.7 m) high, steel scallop shells installed on Aldeburgh beach. Hambling describes the piece as a conversation with the sea. 

Hambling was appointed Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2010 New Year Honours.

Hebe and her serpent [1979]
Oil on canvas, 99 x 69 cm
On loan from Constantine Guppy

Hebe in this instance is a real woman, the artist's lover at the time of the painting. We are vicariously present at an intimate moment of silent conversation between Hebe and her serpent.

Gulf Women Prepare for War [1986]
Oil on canvas, 122 x 145 cm
Donated by the artist 1992

During her year as the National Gallery's first Artist-in-Residence (1980/81), Hambling made a study of the soldier loading his gun in Manet's fragmented painting of the execution of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico. The central figure in Gulf Women Prepare for War refers back to Manet's soldier. Just as Manet based his work on a newspaper account of Maximilian's assassination, Hambling's work is based on a photograph from The Times documenting preparations for the Iran-Iraq War. Both images are more potent than the press coverage itself.  Marina Warner has noted that the hands which pull the trigger belong to a woman dressed according to the dictates of purdah, whose dark form presents an ironic contrast to the soft femininity of the surrounding pink desert.

Portrait of Dr Valerie Pearl [1995]
Charcoal on paper, 60 x 48 cm
Purchased by the Fellows of New Hall to mark the Presidency of Dr Valerie Pearl 1981-1995

Dr Valerie Pearl was appointed as the second President of New Hall in 1981, a position she held until 1995.   She is the daughter of Cyril Bence, the former Labour Party Member of Parliament for East Dunbartonshire and was educated at St Anne's College, Oxford, going up in 1946 and gaining a Second-Class degree in Modern History.  She subsequently gained a D.Phil. for her thesis supervised by Christopher Hill on London and the outbreak of the Puritan Revolution 1625-1643. This was published in revised form by the Oxford University Press in 1961.

Between 1965 and 1968, Valerie Pearl was a Lecturer in History at Somerville College, Oxford. She then moved to University College, London as Reader in London History later holding a chair in the same subject.

Whilst President of New Hall, Dr Pearl was instrumental in creating the New Hall Art Collection.

Portrait of Mrs Anne Lonsdale [2002]
Oil on canvas, 72 x 58 cm
Donated to mark the Presidency of Mrs Anne Lonsdale, 1996-2008

Born Anne Menzies in Huddersfield in February 1941, the only child of Alexander Menzies, a professor of physics at the University of Leeds, Lonsdale was educated at Heathfield School in Harrow before winning a scholarship to read classics at St Anne's College, Oxford in 1957. She then took a second degree in Chinese and taught classical Chinese literature before becoming a university administrator.

From 1993-96 she was Secretary-General of the Central European University based in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw, founded by George Soros in 1991. She developed a major interest in environmental research and policy and was involved in the setting up of a Department of Environmental Sciences and Policy at the CEU Budapest for students from all the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former USSR.

In 1996 Lonsdale was appointed as the third President of New Hall, a position she held until 2008. In this period she also served as Pro-Vice-Chancellor for External Relations, Deputy Vice-Chancellor and was a member of the University's Council and a Trustee of Cambridge in America, the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust and Cambridge Overseas Trust, a Trustee of the Cambridge Foundation, the Gates Cambridge Trust, the Newton Trust, and the Cambridge European Trust, and was Chairman of the Syndicate for the Fitzwilliam Museum. She is currently prorector of the governing board of the Nazarbayev University.

In 2004 Lonsdale was awarded the CBE for services to Higher Education.