Milein Cosman Lecture: Maggi Hambling: Draw • Slade School of Fine Art

Hambling is recognised as one of Britain’s leading artists – relentlessly inventive in her approach to painting, drawing, sculpture and installation. She is perhaps best known for her virtuoso paintings of nature (whether the North Sea or the polar icecaps), her psychologically acute portraits, and her often-controversial public sculpture – yet drawing has formed a constant throughout her work. To this day, the artist begins work every morning with an ink drawing, made ‘blind’ with her left hand. “They’re just like a pianist doing his scales to get into that energy and movement,” she has stated.

Hambling will appear in conversation with writer and critic James Cahill, discussing the ongoing and central role of drawing in her practice. She will look back at her formative years at the Slade (1967-69) as well as several of the milestone exhibitions that have shaped her career, including ‘Maggi Hambling: TOUCH’, an acclaimed retrospective of her works on paper at the British Museum in 2016.

Maggi Hambling (b.1945) trained at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in the early 1960s, before going to the Ipswich (1962-64), Camberwell (1964-67) and Slade (1967-69) Schools of Art. In 1980, she was the first contemporary artist in residence in the National Gallery, London. In the decades since, she has exhibited internationally, with recent major exhibitions including those at Pallant House Gallery, Chichester (2024-25); Ettore Fico Museum, Turin (2023); Central Academy of Fine Arts Museum, Beijing (2019); the British Museum, London (2016); the National Gallery, London (2014); and the Hermitage, St. Petersburg (2013). Her work is held in public collections internationally, including those of the British Museum, Tate, London, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

Details and bookings

Wednesday 29 April
6–7pm
Gustave Tuck Lecture Theatre, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1E 6BT
Free, reserve your ticket via Eventbrite

Milein Cosman

Milein (1921-1917) arrived at the Slade in 1939, just as war broke out, as a Jewish refugee from Düsseldorf in Germany. She was interviewed in the Slade’s imposing building in London, but by the time she started her studies the Slade had been evacuated to Oxford, where it was temporarily amalgamated with the Ruskin School of Drawing. Milein spent a magical few years in Oxford, where her studio became a gathering place for poets and musicians as well as artists — an imaginative haven from the loss and destruction of the war.

Thank you

This event is organised jointly by The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust and the Slade School of Fine Art.

We are grateful to The Cosman Keller Art and Music Trust for supporting this lecture and The Milein Cosman Scholarship for Drawing at the Slade School of Fine Art.