Thunderclap : a memoir of art and life & sudden death

Title:

Author:

Summary:

As a brilliant art critic and historian, Laura Cumming has explored the importance of art in life and can give us a perspective on the time and place in which the artist worked. Now, through the lens of one dramatic event in 17th century Holland, Cumming illuminates one of the most celebrated periods in art history. In 1654, an enormous explosion at a gunpowder store devasted the city of Delft, killing hundreds of people and injuring thousands more. Among those killed was the extraordinary painter Carel Fabritius, renowned for his paintings The Goldfinch and his haunting masterpiece A View of Delft, which depicts the very streets through which the victims would be carried to their graves. Fabritius’s contemporary and rival Vermeer, painter of the iconic portrait Girl with a Pearl Earring, narrowly escaped death. Framing the story around Fabritius’s life, Cumming deftly weaves a sequence of observations about paintings and how they relate to everyday life. Like Dutch art itself, the story gradually links country, city, town, street, house, interior—all the way to the bird on its perch, the blue and white tile, the smallest seed in a loaf of bread. The impact of a painting and how it can enter our thoughts, influence our views, and understanding of the world is the heart of this book and Cumming has brought her unique eye to her most compelling subject yet. Featuring beautiful full-color images of Dutch paintings throughout, this is a stunningly rich book about one of the most vibrant periods in European art and life. -- Amazon.

Edition:

First Scribner hardcover edition.

Physical Description:

263 pages : illustrations (chiefly color) ; 24 cm

Genre:

Autobiographies.

Personal Subject:

Fabritius, Carel, 1622-1654.

Cumming, James, 1922-1991.

Cumming, Laura-Childhood and youth.

Subject Term:

Explosions -- Netherlands -- Delft -- History -- 17th century.

Painting, Dutch -- 17th century.

Painters -- Netherlands.

Added Corporate Author:

Simon and Schuster, Inc.,

Publisher:

Scribner,

Publication Date:

2023

ISBN:

9781982181741

Publication Information:

New York : Scribner, 2023

Call Number:

759.9492 CUMMING

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607003672956	New Adult Nonfiction	759.9492 CUMMING	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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On Order

Summary

Named a Top 100 Must-Read Book of the Year by Time and a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker * Winner of the 2024 Writers' Prize for Nonfiction * Shortlisted for the Inaugural Women's Prize for Nonfiction * Longlisted for the RSL Ondaatje Prize

New York Times bestselling author Laura Cumming "combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir" ( The Washington Post ) in this fascinating, little-known story of the massive explosion in Holland that killed Carel Fabritius, renowned painter of The Goldfinch and A View of Delft and nearly killed Johannes Vermeer--two of the greatest artists of the 17th century.

"Exquisite." --Simon Schama, The Guardian

As a brilliant art critic and historian, Laura Cumming has explored the importance of art in life and can give us a perspective on the time and place in which the artist worked. Now, through the lens of one dramatic event in 17th-century Holland, Cumming "has fashioned a book that combines memoir, art criticism, and history to illuminating effect" ( The New York Times Book Review ).

In 1654, the Thunderclap--an enormous explosion at a gunpowder store--devasted the city of Delft, killing hundreds of people, including the extraordinary painter Carel Fabritius, and injuring thousands more.

Framing the story around the life of Fabritius, Cumming illuminates this extraordinary moment in art history while also writing about her own father, a painter. Like Dutch art, the story gradually links country, city, town, street, house, interior--all the way to the bird on its perch, the blue and white tile, the smallest seed in a loaf of bread. The impact of a painting and how it can enter our thoughts, influence our view and understanding of the world is the heart of this book. Cumming has brought her unique eye to her most compelling subject yet.

Featuring beautiful full-color images of Dutch paintings throughout, this is "a glorious tribute to the two men who showed her the truth of the notion that paintings offer 'a land in themselves, a society, a place to be'" ( The Economist ).

Author Notes

Laura Cumming has been the art critic of The Observer (London) since 1999. Previously, she was arts editor of The New Statesman (UK), literary editor of The Listener (UK), and deputy editor of Literary Review . She is a former columnist for The Herald (Scotland) and has contributed to the Evening Standard (London), The Guardian , L'Express , and Vogue. Her book The Vanishing Velazquez was longlisted for the Bailie Gifford Prize and was a New York Times bestseller.

Reviews (1)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Art critic Cumming (The Vanishing Man) examines how art has enriched both her own life and others' in this vivid history of the golden age of Dutch painting and its rupture by the 1654 explosion at a Delft gunpowder storehouse that leveled much of the city and killed hundreds. Among the casualties was Carel Fabritius (1622--1654), an apprentice to Rembrandt whose best-known paintings are The Goldfinch and A View of Delft. As Cumming, who counts Fabritius as one of her favorite artists, recreates what she can of his life and work and surveys other Dutch masters she admires--Rembrandt, Ter Borch, De Hooch, Ruisdael, Van Goyen--she seamlessly intertwines memories of her Scottish childhood and her artist father, James Cumming (1922--1991), whom she credits with teaching her how to look and see. In this elegant and luminous work, Cumming writes with deep feeling and knowledge about how "pictures can shore you up, remind you who you are and what you stand for." Art lovers will be enthralled. (July)