Maurice Prosper Lambert was born in Paris, France on 25 June 1901. His father was the Australian painter and sculptor George Washington Thomas Lambert (1873-1930), and his brother was the composer Constant Lambert (1905-1951). He moved to England as a child and was educated in London.
Between c.1918 and 1923 he worked as an apprentice to the sculptor Francis Derwent Wood (1871-1926). From 1919 to 1927, Lambert also attended life classes at Chelsea Polytechnic in London. He subsequently worked as a sculptor in a range of mediums including bronze, marble, alabaster, hardwood, stone, glass, aluminium, plywood and concrete.
He began exhibiting at the Goupil Galleries in London in 1925 and first exhibited at the Royal Academy in London in 1938. Thereafter he was a frequent exhibitor at the RA until 1965, the year after his death. He also exhibited at the London Group and Arthur Tooth & Sons Gallery in London; the Royal Glasgow Institute of the Fine Arts; Walker Art Gallery in Liverpool; and at the Royal Scottish Academy in Edinburgh. Four solo exhibitions of his work were held during his lifetime, the first at Claridge Gallery in London in 1927.
He was elected a member of the 7 & 5 Society in 1928; London Group in 1930; an Associate of Royal Society of British Sculptor (ARBS) in 1938; Associate of the Royal Academy (ARA) in 1941; and a Royal Academician (RA) in 1953. Between 1950 and 1958 he taught modelling at the Royal Academy Schools in London.
Notable among Lambert's work were a life-size bronze statue of the ballerina Dame Margot Fonteyn; and an equestrian statue of George V for Adelaide, South Australia; a 50- foot frieze for the ocean liner Queen Mary; 'Oceanides', a bronze for the first-class foyer of the ocean liner Queen Elizabeth; ‘Spirit of Britain’, a forty-foot high figure for the New York World Fair in 1939; 'Modern Mercury', a forty-foot high statue for the centennial exhibition in Wellington, New Zealand.
Lambert died in London on 17 August 1964.
