Laetitia Yhap

Laetitia Yhap (born 1 May 1941) is an English artist, best known for intricate paintings of fishermen on Stade Beach in Hastings and for not painting on traditional canvas. She is of Chinese and Austrian heritage.

Family and education Yhap was born on 1 May 1941 in the city of St Albans, Hertfordshire. Her father was Leshe Neville Yhap, a Chinese medical student, and her mother was Elizabeth Yhap (née Kogler), an Austrian World War II refugee.

Yhap studied at the Camberwell School of Art and the Slade School of Art. She was awarded a Leverhulme Travel Scholarship which she used to travel to Italy to research renaissance art and architecture. She submitted a painting to an open exhibition called Young Contemporaries, and was referenced in an art critics review for The Daily Telegraph. Her work is never painted on traditional canvas, as "I disliked canvas and the way its weave affected the brush stroke." Her surfaces instead incorporate driftwood and rope. and the New Hall Art Collection at the University of Cambridge.

Retrospective exhibitions of her work have been held in England and China. In 2020, the Yanlan Arts and Culture Foundation in Beijing, China, hosted Laetitia Yhap: Longings and Belonging.