Maggi Hambling: Nightingale night
[ Exhibition )
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Maggi Hambling, Nightingale night VII, 2023, Oil on canvas, © Maggi Hambling
Explore the profound connection between nature, sound, and art in a new series by one of Britain’s most celebrated artists.
This exhibition features 14 new paintings by renowned artist Maggi Hambling, inspired by a night spent in the Sussex woodland guided by folk musician and conservationist, Sam Lee. During this time, the nightingales’ haunting songs left a deep impression on Hambling, resulting in artworks that reflect the beauty and power of that moment.
Through a striking gold-on-black palette, Hambling evokes the birdsong cutting through the darkness, capturing the fleeting beauty of sound. The works reflect both the transience and power of her experience and the growing threat to nightingales due to climate change.
Hambling’s paintings explore how song, whether bird or human, can be transformed into gesture and colour. The exhibition also includes works inspired by the voices of Leonard Cohen, PJ Harvey, and Will Young, as well as a monumental piece influenced by Nick Cave.
As expressed throughout Hambling’s work, the paintings’ incredible energy will explore the delicate balance of life and death.
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About Maggi Hambling CBE
Maggi Hambling CBE was born in Suffolk in 1945. She studied at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing from 1960 under Cedric Morris and Lett Haines, then at Ipswich School of Art, Camberwell, and finally the Slade School of Art, graduating in 1969.
In 1980 she was the First Artist in Residence at the National Gallery, London, and in 1995 she won the Jerwood Painting Prize (with Patrick Caulfield). Public sculpture includes A conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998) at Adelaide Street, London, facing Charing Cross Station and Scallop (2003), a sculpture to celebrate Benjamin Britten, at Aldeburgh beach, Suffolk and for which the artist was awarded the Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture. A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft was unveiled in Newington Green, London in 2020.
Hambling’s work is held in public collections including at Tate, British Museum, CAFA, Beijing and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.
