Pallant House Gallery

Maggi Hambling has over time responded to the sound of song in her work, consistently capturing it in gold against a black ground--to date her diverse subjects have included the singers Leonard Cohen, Nick Cave, P J Harvey, and Will Young. More recently, and following a night spent in the Sussex wilderness in the company of folk singer Sam Lee listening to the song of the nightingale, the artist embarked on a new series of paintings, capturing the song of this small migratory songbird.

James Cahill’s text places Hambling’s striking new nightingale series in context and considers the long history of the nightingale, which has been celebrated by writers, poets, artists and musicians for thousands of years.

Distributed for Pallant House Gallery

James Cahill is a writer and critic based in London who has written for Apollo, The Burlington Magazine, CURA, Elephant, Frieze, The Los Angeles Review of Books, London Review of Books and Times Literary Supplement. In 2017 he completed a PhD at Cambridge University examining the relationship between contemporary art and classical antiquity.

Sam Lee is a Mercury prize nominated singer, inventive and original arranger, folksong interpreter, passionate conservationist, song collector and creator of live events. In 2021, he released his debut novel ’The Nightingale, notes on a songbird’ telling the epic tale of this highly endangered bird and their place in
culture, folklore, music and literature throughout the millennia.