Taking the dramatic 1654 explosion in Delft that killed the painter Carel Fabritius as a springboard for a profound meditation on Dutch art and culture, the author of On Chapel Sands casts light on an era of astonishing artistic creativity and innovation.
Winner of the Non-Fiction Writers' Prize 2024
Shortlisted for the Women's Prize for Non-Fiction 2024
From the Sunday Times-bestselling author of On Chapel Sands
'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.
Publisher: Vintage Publishing
ISBN: 9781784744526
Number of pages: 272
Weight: 640 g
Dimensions: 212 x 154 x 30 mm
A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty - Sunday Times
This is an extraordinary book, full of beauty and feeling and immediacy and depth (and impressive detective work)...Thunderclap is a work of genius - India Knight
One of the most captivating books I have ever read… Delightful, intimate, and dotted with beautiful art. A wonderful read (or a great present) for anyone who loves stories and art - Nina Stibbe
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
[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
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
[A] fascinating amalgam of insightful art appreciation and a haunting personal story - Sunday Times, Books of the Year*
An intriguing, ambitious and tender blend of art history and personal memoir, this beautifully illustrated book is one to read and re-read - Daily Mail, Books of the Year*
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
The life-like painting ‘The Goldfinch’, painted by the Dutch artist Carel Fabritius, who died in a gunpowder warehouse explosion in 1654, inspired many novels. The painting was found among the debris where he, his... More
Part of the wonder of art is the singular connection we form, invisible strings that draw us to one piece and not another. It's deeply personal and all but indefinable; Cummings is able to lay it on the page... More
‘Thunderclap’ by Laura Cumming is a captivating celebration of Dutch art as well as a moving exploration of the power of paintings for creator and audience alike.
It centres on the elusive life of 17th-century...
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