Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death

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)