The Fitzwilliam Museum hosts Maggi Hambling ~ The Wave ~

Written by Carly Farthing Thursday, 06 May 2010 23:54

CAMBRIDGE, UK - Maggi Hambling ~ The Wave brings together a powerful group of large-scale paintings depicting the power and energy of the North Sea. A series of evocative and sensual portraits of the wave, these works reveal the artist’s long-standing fascination with the elemental character of the sea. On exhibition at The Fitzwilliam Museum through 8 August, 2010.

The North Sea off the Suffolk coast has dominated Hambling’s art since 2002, a year before her celebrated sculpture Scallop was unveiled on Aldeburgh beach. This exhibition at The Fitzwilliam Museum comprises her most recent paintings, a number of which will be on public display for the first time. The paintings on display, particularly Rising Wave (2009), demonstrate Hambling's increasingly bold way of working. Throughout these works, economy of colour and gesture perfectly state the powerful upward thrust of the curving wave. Among her most ambitious in scale, these works confront the viewer with all the power, grandeur and beauty of the sea.

Fitzwilliam Museum Director Timothy Potts said: "This is a wonderful exhibition in which Maggi Hambling demonstrates all the robust authenticity and explosive energy for which she is renowned. The swelling and crashing of waves along the Suffolk coast provides the perfect subject for her expressive style and lashing fluidity of brushwork. Rarely since Turner has a British artist conveyed the turbulent power and majesty of the sea — at once fascinating and frightening — as successfully as Hambling does in this landmark series of paintings."

"As the waves of the North Sea voraciously consume our coast, these new paintings respond to the energy of their action as they break," writes Hambling. "This sea, the widest of mouths, roaring or laughing, is always seductive. Life and death mysteriously co-exist in the timeless rhythm of the waves."

To coincide with this exhibition of paintings, Maggi Hambling's New Sea Sculpture is on show at Marlborough Fine Art, London, 4 May – 5 June 2010.

The Fitzwilliam Museum  / The Fitzwilliam Museum houses the University of Cambridge's art collection and is a public museum and art gallery with an international reputation. More than half a million objects and works of art are held in five curatorial departments: Antiquities, Applied Arts, Coins and Medals, Manuscripts and Printed Books and Paintings, Drawings and Prints.

The Fitzwilliam’s treasures range from Ancient Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities to the arts of the 21st century and include masterpieces by Titian, Canaletto, Stubbs, Constable, Monet, Renoir and Picasso, one of the world’s foremost Rembrandt print collections, Handel music manuscripts and the famous Fitzwilliam Virginal Book, one of the most significant collections of Korean ceramics outside South-East Asia, medieval illuminated manuscripts and outstanding collections of pottery, porcelain and medieval coins.

The Fitzwilliam Museum welcomes over 300,000 visitors a year, offers a wide-ranging programme of temporary exhibitions and events, and has an award-winning Education Service. The Museum is open Tuesday – Saturday: 10.00 – 17.00, Sunday and Bank Holiday Mondays: 12.00 - 17.00. Free admission. Website: www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk