Thunderclap

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

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

'With her humane and luminous stories of Dutch art and artists, and of her painter father, Laura Cumming shows that life comes at you fast. There may not be time to rage against the dying of the light - we should use the light now. Use it to look and to connect'

Hugh Aldersley-Williams, author of Dutch Light

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

Our guide is like no other. We are taken across a portal into another world, both intimate and oceanic. How the light pours in. Here is a book to enrichen our lives. Delicate, exact, visionary, personal. And here's the thing: the searing love behind every perfect word

Keggie Carew, author of Dadland

Beautiful . . . It held me completely in its thrall. These voices and visions from the seventeenth century, so effortlessly woven through the author's memories of a Scottish childhood in the twentieth, will speak to many readers navigating timeless issues of love and identity, inheritance and mortality today. Thunderclap is an intimate and compelling investigation of the art of memory, and what survives of us

Nancy Campbell, author of Fifty Words for Snow

[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

As deftly told as any thriller, culminating in a lightning strike of a final paragraph which makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck each time I read it ... An astonishingly rich book

The Bookseller

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

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

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

Compelling ... Cumming writes about art with a painter's precision and celebrates the power of pictures to bring us closer, not just to other people but to other worlds

The Spectator

Pretty much anything is a focal point for Cumming's eye. She writes in such granular detail about these paintings...that she can leave you feeling you've never properly studied anything in your life

Mail on Sunday

[An] excellent book about art, life and death

i

'Thunderclap combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir... and does what Fabritius's sibylline scenes do: it does not redescribe so much as reimagine'

The Washington Post

A remarkable experiment in form as well as a richly satisfying extended meditation on art, life and death

Literary Review

A book that often borders on the sublime in its sentiment and beauty

Sunday 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

Guardian

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

Cumming's descriptions of what is in front of her eyes are often incandescently beautiful, and well informed. She has a special ability to transport her readers, presenting historical facts and scientific developments as the marvels they are. Her curiosity is infectious-you don't have to love Dutch art to love this book, though you may well come away with a renewed sense of its value. We can luxuriate in visiting the Dutch Golden Age with such a humane and knowledgeable guide

Air Mail

The author blends elements seamlessly ... Cumming's prose is luminous

i paper

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

Cumming's prose is luminous... Thunderclap is a love letter to Fabritius, whom history has neglected

i

Cumming skilfully blends art criticism with history, biography and moving personal recollections of her artist father

Daily Telegraph, *Summer Reads of 2023*

Fabritius...[is] best known for painting The Goldfinch, made famous by Donna Tartt's wonderful novel of that name, but Thunderclap is so much more, reminiscent of The Hard with Amber Eyes and H Is for Hawk

The Times, *Summer Reads of 2023*

The author and Observer critic Laura Cumming is a lovely writer about art and about her own family. Both are present in Thunderclap, a beguiling sort-of memoir

New Statesman

Wondrous .... Its thunderclap still echoes in my ears

Wall Street Journal

A beautifully written, exquisitely structured, achingly moving study of the painter Fabritius. But it is also much more: a threnody for her father, a love letter to Dutch civilisation, a meditation on what we can truly know of times past

Tom Holland

Fabulous . . . Sent me straight back to Dutch painters of the 17th with newly opened eyes . . . Highly recommended.

Mark Haddon

Combines first-rate art history with deeply felt memoir ... Provides a shimmering new place where we can live and look

Washington Post

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

[A] fascinating amalgam of insightful art appreciation and a haunting personal story

Sunday Times, *Books of the Year*

A poetic yet clear-eyed investigation of art, family and loss

Prospect, *Books of the Year*

This marvellous book shows us how looking carefully at a painting can change your perspective in a thunderclap

Daily Express, *Books of the Year*

An inviting, hugely readable book....and one of our picks of the year

Great British Life, *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*

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

A terrific read about art, life and death

i, *Summer Reads of 2024*