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OverviewFrom 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 'No one writes art like Laura Cumming' Philip Hoare, author of Albert and the Whale 'I will never look at any painting in the same way again' Polly Morland, author of A Fortunate Woman _____________________ '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 Full Product DetailsAuthor: Laura CummingPublisher: Vintage Publishing Imprint: Chatto & Windus Dimensions: Width: 15.40cm , Height: 3.00cm , Length: 21.20cm Weight: 0.640kg ISBN: 9781784744526ISBN 10: 1784744522 Pages: 272 Publication Date: 06 July 2023 Audience: General/trade , Professional and scholarly , College/higher education , General , Professional & Vocational Format: Hardback Publisher's Status: Active Availability: In stock  We have confirmation that this item is in stock with the supplier. It will be ordered in for you and dispatched immediately. Table of ContentsReviews'[A] lustrous meditation on the lives and after-lives of artists ... with a novelist's pace, a critic's eye, a daughter's heart' * Financial Times * 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 * 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 * A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty * Sunday Times * Cumming is a word-painter ... When something fascinates Laura Cumming, she makes sure, with her beguiling prose, that we too are caught up in her fascination * The Times * Cumming clearly loves these paintings, and by weaving together vivid evocations of ones that particularly move her with brief biographies of the men and women who painted them, she invites us to share that love * New York Times * Exquisite... [Cumming's] pages are themselves lovely exercises in poetic vision and stay with you long after you finish -- Simon Schama, author of BELONGING * Guardian * 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 * A masterpiece ... So moving and profound in its compassion for our short, vivid lives. I will never look at any painting in the same way again * Polly Morland, author of A Fortunate Woman * 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 * Cumming writes with the sureness of carefully laid paint... she brings him [Fabritius] out of the shadows, making us see why he is so much more than the missing link in someone else's story * Guardian * Pretty much anything is a focal point for Cumming's eye. She writes in such granular detail about these paintings...that she can leave you feeling you've never properly studied anything in your life * Mail on Sunday * [A] lustrous meditation on the lives and after-lives of artists ... with a novelist's pace, a critic's eye, a daughter's heart * Financial Times * [An] excellent book about art, life and death * i * The author blends elements seamlessly ... Cumming's prose is luminous * i paper * A superb tribute to the masterpieces of the Dutch Golden Age, and the father who taught her how to see them ... In asking why we return to paintings across decades and centuries, this book taught me to see anew * Telegraph * 'Thunderclap combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir... and does what Fabritius's sibylline scenes do: it does not redescribe so much as reimagine' * The Washington Post * Author InformationLaura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her book, The Vanishing Man- In Pursuit of Velazquez, was Book of the Week on Radio 4, Wall Street Journal Book of the Year and a New York Times bestseller. It won the 2017 James Tait Black Biography Prize and was published to critical acclaim ('A riveting detective story- readers will be spellbound' Colm T ibin). Her first book, A Face to the World- On Self-Portraits, was described by Nick Hornby as 'Brilliant, fizzing with ideas not just about art but human nature' and by Julian Barnes as 'that rare item- an art book where the text is so enthralling that the pictures almost seem like an interruption'. Tab Content 6Author Website:Countries AvailableAll regions |
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