Good Friday: Walking on Water, 2006, 2006
Maggi Hambling (b.1945)
Oil on board, 53 x 67 cm. Methodist Modern Art Collection, MCMAC: 017
Image Copyright © Trustees for Methodist Church Purposes. The Methodist Church Registered Charity no. 1132208
Biblical commentary
John 6: 16-21
Artist Maggi Hambling has a strong preoccupation with the sea, and its mysterious power comes across strongly in this painting. Yet, it is the equally mysterious image – human, yet not quite human, with a hint of a halo in place – that draws our attention. The title reflects the fact that each Good Friday Hambling has produced a painting in memory of her late mother where, as she puts it, she is striving to capture the perfect image of life and death at one and the same moment. This painting was her 2006 contribution to the series. Conscious of the myriad biblical references to water, from the first chapter of Genesis onwards, she believes “Each wave can be seen as a self-regenerative force, untameable by man, but speaking of the power of God.”
Commentary based on A Guide to the Methodist Art Collection.
Artist biography
Born: Sudbury, Suffolk, 1945
Early life and education
Maggi Hambling was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. Her father was a local politician. She was and remained close to her mother.
She studied privately with painters Cedric Morris and Arthur Lett Haines in Suffolk before attending the East Anglian School of Art (1960-62), Ipswich School of Art (1962-64), Camberwell School of Art, London (1964-67), and the Slade School of Fine Art (1967-69).
Life and career
Hambling has won several awards and honours including the Jerwood Painting Prize (with Patrick Caulfield) in 1995, an OBE in the same year, and the Marsh Award for Excellence in Public Sculpture for Scallop in 2005. She was awarded a CBE in 2010
Hambling is primarily a painter, well known for her portraits. She was the first Artist-in-Residence at the National Gallery between 1981 and1982. She responded to the collection in graphite, pencil, or charcoal, particularly studying Rubens’ Samson and Delilah. However, she is probably best known for her public outdoor sculptures, notably A Conversation with Oscar Wilde (1998) in Adelaide Street, central London; Scallop (2003) which celebrates the composer Benjamin Britten on the beach at Aldeburgh, Suffolk, (near Hambling’s home in Saxmundham); and A Sculpture for Mary Wollstonecraft (2020) in Newington Green, north London. All these sculptures have attracted controversy. Hambling also became well known for her ‘trenchant views on art’ (Art UK) as a panellist on the television show Gallery.
Hambling has a strong preoccupation with the power of the sea and its interaction with the shore of the Suffolk coast. This is seen in Scallop and her Walls of Water exhibition in the National Gallery, London in 2014. Although not a believer (she describes herself as “an optimistic doubter”), her work reveals an interest in spirituality and in life, death and the afterlife as seen in her sculpture Resurrection Spirit installed in St Dunstan's Church in Mayfield, East Sussex (The Guardian, 29 March 2013). This interest is also seen in the series of paintings Good Friday which she produces on Good Friday each year in memory of her late mother, including the MMAC’s Good Friday, Walking on Water, 2006.
Exhibitions and collections
Hambling has had several solo exhibitions throughout the UK and in the United States including solo shows in: Hadleigh Gallery, Hadleigh, Essex (1967); Morley Gallery (1973); Warehouse Gallery (1977); Serpentine Gallery, London (1987); Bernard Jacobson (1990); Marlborough Fine Art (1996); and The Pallant House Gallery (2024-25).
Her group shows include: A Space of 5 Times at Grabowski Gallery, London (1970); the John Player Biennale in Nottingham and several showings in the John Moores Exhibition, Liverpool.
Collections holding her work include: the Arts Council of Great Britain; the British Council; the National Gallery, London; the National Portrait Gallery, London; the Scottish National Gallery of Modern Art, Edinburgh; and the Scottish National Portrait Gallery, Edinburgh.
Sources and further reading
David Buckman, Artists in Britain Since 1945: Volume 1 A to L, Vol. 1 of 2 volumes, (Bristol: Art Dictionaries Ltd, 2006),p. 668. The text is also available on the Art UK website: artuk.org/discover/artists/hambling-maggi-b-1945
Seeing the Spiritual: A Guide to the Methodist Modern Art Collection, (Oxford: Methodist Modern Art Collection, 2018), p. 48-49.
Tate Gallery, ‘Maggi Hambling’, tate.org.uk/art/artists/maggi-hambling-1242