The Fitzwilliam Museum presents a major exhibition of new sea paintings by one of Britain’s most distinguished contemporary artists – Maggi Hambling (b. 1945). Open through 8 August 2010.
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.
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.
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.
www.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk
Image: Maggi Hambling Rising Wave, 2009 © Maggi Hambling
