Thunderclap
A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death
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- $33.99
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- $33.99
Publisher Description
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).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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)
