s Portrait of Maureen Lipman - Hull Museums Collections

Portrait of Maureen Lipman

In a colourful musical and artistic career, Humphrey Ocean has played bass guitar with Ian Dury's band 'Kilburn and the Highroads', and in 1976 toured the USA as artist-in-residence with Paul McCartney's 'Wings'. In 1982, as winner of their Imperial Tobacco Portrait Award, Ocean was asked by the National Portrait Gallery to paint the poet Philip Larkin (completed 1984). This brought him to Hull, and to the attention of the Ferens Art Gallery. An exhibition at the Ferens followed in 1986-7, touring throughout the UK with a large selection of works chosen by the artist from the Ferens collection. After the exhibition Ocean was commissioned by the Friends of the Ferens to paint the Hull-born actress Maureen Lipman; he was an obvious choice, as his portraits of contemporary celebrities are immensely popular. Maureen Lipman, who often visited the Ferens as a girl, was delighted to sit for him. The result is an unusual and informal composition with Maureen in a full-length horizontal pose. The artist has added a ripple-moulded inner frame turned on a 17th century Dutch machine, much in keeping with the Ferens' Dutch collection.