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Image: Maggi Hambling Photographed by Laura Bailey

Picture This

Maggi Hambling and John Wilson in conversation

This event is part of Picture This.
Talks and conversations
Date
Friday, 10 April 2026
Time
7 - 8 pm, doors open at 6.30 pm
Location
Pigott Theatre
Audience
For everyone

Tickets

Standard: £22
Concessions: £17

Please book a ticket to attend this event.

Please arrive in good time to access the building and find the event.

Bookings close ten-minutes before the event.

Concessions are for full-time students, jobseekers, and disabled adults.

Book now

About

‘Picture This,’ is a brand new series of conversations, hosted by journalist and presenter of the BBC’s 'This Cultural Life', John Wilson. Special guests from a wide variety of fields, including fashion, music, literature and film, will join John to reflect on their life and work through the lens of a National Gallery painting.

This April, join us for a special evening with renowned British artist Maggi Hambling as she joins John Wilson to reflect on Rembrandt‘s 'Self Portrait at the Age of 63'.

Maggi Hambling CBE is a renowned British contemporary artist. From her formative period at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in the early 1960s, then at the Slade and Camberwell, she was the first artist-in-residence at the National Gallery in 1980. Hambling has maintained a singular place in the global sphere of contemporary art. Love, death and remembrance are revealed as her enduring themes, and are reflected in her intimate portraits as much as her epic-scaled evocations of war, the climate emergency, and the natural world. Hambling’s work has been the subject of many solo museum shows most recently across the UK and China and is held in public collections including at Tate, British Museum, CAFA, Beijing and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York.

John Wilson

John Wilson
John Wilson is an acclaimed journalist and broadcaster who has specialised in arts and cultural affairs for over 25 years. He presents 'This Cultural Life', the BBC Radio 4 podcast series on which guests have included some of the world’s most important creative figures including Paul McCartney, Frank Auerbach, Margaret Atwood, Salman Rushdie, Judi Dench, Sam Mendes, Nick Cave, Jennifer Lawrence, Nile Rodgers and many more. John presented BBC Radio 4’s flagship arts magazine show 'Front Row' from its launch in 1998 until 2021. He also hosted the acclaimed music series 'Mastertapes' and presented the art theft investigation documentary 'The Billion Dollar Art Hunt' for BBC Four.

Livestream

This event will be in the Pigott Theatre.

The event will also be livestreamed. If you would prefer to watch the livestream, please book tickets here.