Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death

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From the Sunday Times bestselling author, Laura Cumming, a kaleidoscopic memoir connecting her life as an art critic with the vivid world of her father's paintings and those of the Dutch Golden Age - richly illustrated in full colour throughout From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of On Chapel Sands, shortlisted for the Costa Prize for Biography Praise for Laura Cumming's books- 'A modern masterpiece . . . Brilliant' Guardian 'Superlative' Daily Telegraph 'One of the best memoirs in recent years' i paper _____________________ 'We see with everything that we are' On the morning of 12 October 1654, in the Dutch city of Delft, a sudden explosion was followed by a thunderclap that could be heard more than seventy miles away. Carel Fabritius - now known across the world for his exquisite painting, The Goldfinch - had been at work in his studio. He, along with many others, would not survive the day. In Thunderclap, Laura Cumming reveals her passion for the art of the Dutch Golden Age and her determination to lift up the reputation of Fabritius. She reveals the Netherlands, where - wandering the narrow streets of Amsterdam, driving across the flatlands, or pausing at a quiet waterfront - she encounters the rich reality behind the shining beauty of Vermeer and Rembrandt, Hals and de Hooch. She shares too her relationship with her father, the Scottish artist James Cumming, who had his own deep connection to Dutch painting, and who taught her about colour, light and the rewards of looking deeply. This is a book about what a picture may come to mean- how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap, a sudden clarity of sight. This is also a book about the precariousness of human life - the way it may be snatched from us in an instant. What can art do to sustain us The work that survives tells its own compelling story in these pages. _____________________ Praise for On Chapel Sands, a Sunday Times Memoir of the Year- 'Cumming skilfully withholds key twists in the tale, revealing them at just the right moment' The Times 'Outstanding . . . A peerless detective story that keeps you guessing to the end' Sunday Times Praise for The Vanishing Man, winner of the James Tait Black Prize- 'Superb and original' Sunday Times 'Sumptuous . . . A gleaming work of someone at the peak of her craft' New York Times

Reviews

No one writes art like Laura Cumming . . . There's a passionate energy in this book, a dexterity of description and narrative and a sensitivity to the subtleties of painting and personal memory that leaves you utterly breathless and transfixed. You are never going to read a better book about the experience of art - and of love' * Philip Hoare, author of Albert & the Whale *
'Cumming unwraps the truth of Fabritius, Vermeer and other artists in the catastrophically shattered town of Delft with glowing intelligence, in prose that shines and beams and recreates life almost to the point of photosynthesis' * Candia McWilliam, author of What to Look For in Winter *
With Thunderclap, Laura Cumming does for Dutch Golden Age painting and the curious life of an art critic what H Is for Hawk did for T H White and falconry. This deeply personal analysis of what it is to gaze and wonder, to read stories in centuries-old oil paint, will send you hurrying back to your nearest gallery * Patrick Gale, author of Mother's Boy *
'Our guide is like no other. We are taken across a portal into another world, both intimate and oceanic. How the light pours in. Here is a book to enrichen our lives. Delicate, exact, visionary, personal. And here's the thing: the searing love behind every perfect word' * Keggie Carew, author of Dadland *
'Beautiful . . . It held me completely in its thrall. These voices and visions from the seventeenth century, so effortlessly woven through the author's memories of a Scottish childhood in the twentieth, will speak to many readers navigating timeless issues of love and identity, inheritance and mortality today. Thunderclap is an intimate and compelling investigation of the art of memory, and what survives of us' * Nancy Campbell, author of Fifty Words for Snow *

Author Bio

Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her books include A Face to the World- On Self-Portraits (2009) and The Vanishing Man- In Pursuit of Velazquez (2016) which won the James Tait Black Biography Prize. Her family memoir, On Chapel Sands- my Mother and other Missing Persons (2019) was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford, Costa and Rathbone's Folio prizes.