In conversation with Alastair Laurence.
Laura Cumming’s latest book Thunderclap is a memoir that connects her own life with that of her father’s paintings and those of the Dutch Golden Age.
She has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her other books include A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits (2009) and The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez (2016) which won the James Tait Black Biography Prize. Her previous family memoir, On Chapel Sands: my mother and other Missing Persons (2019) was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford, Costa and Rathbone’s Folio prizes.
Alastair Laurence, who is curating this series, is a freelance documentary film maker who lives near Abergavenny. In recent years Alastair has made films about The Battle of the Somme, a history of British Photography and the poets John Betjeman, Philip Larkin and TS Eliot.
SUPERB REVIEWS FOR THUNDERCLAP…
‘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 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.’ The 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