Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art, Life and Sudden Death by Laura Cumming

*This book is on sale because of some minor folds on the book.

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).

REVIEWS

“If you haven’t yet read Thunderclap by Laura Cumming—a brilliant exploration of Carl Fabritius, Vermeer and survival and loss—rush out and buy it. By far the best book on art of the Netherlands that I’ve read.” —Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare with Amber Eyes and Letters to Camondo

“Wonderous…with Cumming’s Proust-like meditations on time never to be recovered and art never to be produced, its thunderclap still echoes in my ears.” —Wall Street Journal

“Genre-defying . . . By weaving together vivid evocations of ones that move her with brief biographies of the men and women who painted them, she invites us to share that love. Like all good elegists, Cumming brings the dead to life in the very act of mourning them.” —New York Times Book Review

PRODUCT DETAILS
Trade Paperback
Publisher: Scribner
ISBN: 978-1982181741
Pages: 272