Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life & Sudden Death

by Laura Cumming

A beautifully illustrated new memoir of a life in art, a father and daughter, and what a shared love of a painting can come to mean.'We see with everything that we are'On the morning of 12 October 1654, a gunpowder explosion devastated the Dutch city of Delft. The thunderclap was heard over seventy miles away. Among the fatalities was the painter Carel Fabritius, dead at thirty-two, leaving only his haunting masterpiece The Goldfinch and barely a dozen known paintings. The explosion that killed him also buried his reputation, along with answers to the mysteries of his life and career. What happened to Fabritius before and after this disaster is just one of the discoveries in a book that explores the relationship between art and life, interweaving the lives of Laura Cumming, her Scottish painter father, who also died too young, and the great artists of the Dutch Golden Age. This is a book about what a picture may come to how it can enter your life and change your thinking in a thunderclap.

Genres: Nonfiction, Art, Memoir, History, Biography, Art History, Audiobook

198 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 11, 2023

About the author

Laura Cumming (born July 1961) the art critic for The Observer. In addition to her career in journalism, Cumming has written well-received books on self-portraits in art and the discovery of a lost portrait by Diego Velázquez in 1845.

Reviews

[Hannah Greendale (Hello, Bookworm) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A gorgeous ode to Dutch art. And that ENDING! 😭

Check out my Women's Prize Deep Dive on BookTube at Hello, Bookworm.📚🐛



"Paintings are reliable; they are not supposed to let us down. They absorb all our looking and our feelings without ever changing, unlike living beings."

Thunderclap is named after a historic event in the Netherlands that happened in 1654 called the Delft Thunderclap, in which there was an enormous explosion at a store where an inspector with a lantern accidentally set off 90,000 pounds of black gunpowder, devastating the city, injuring thousands, and killing hundreds of people, including a painter named Carol Fabritius.

Cummings proceeds to explore the life and work of Fabritius along with several other Dutch painters. She weaves in reflections on her relationship with her father, who was also a painter. The result is one of the most beautiful books I've read this year.

Even if you're not a fan of art (as I certainly cannot claim to be), this is an exquisite book worth giving a read.

[Barbara K · Rating 5 out of 5]

It seems as if whenever I sit down to write a review of a book I absolutely loved, the first word that comes to my mind is, "Wow!" That's certainly the case here.

This is actually a small and quiet book, despite the title. In it, Laura Cumming, a highly regarded art critic and author, weaves together two subjects close to her heart: 17th century Dutch painting, and her artist father. Along the way she writes brilliantly about topics such as how she responds to art at a physical and emotional level; about the effective use of color in art; about 17th century Dutch culture; about how paintings, and even painters, can be lost and rediscovered; and about the the 1654 gunpowder store explosion in Delft that killed Carel Fabritius.

Fabritius is best known for the painting "The Goldfinch", featured in the Donna Tartt novel of the same name. I was underwhelmed with that book (well, if you know how I feel about Dickensian stories, that shouldn't be a surprise), but the painting is exceptional. Cumming considers Fabritius to be the most innovative of those 17th century Dutch painters and describes each of his few extant paintings in loving detail.

Cumming effectively pleads the case for these Dutch artists and their paintings of everyday objects and everyday life, arguing that they should not be dismissed as nothing more than well executed representations of their world. She dissects individual art works into their tiniest components to call out the brilliance of the artists' technique and the wit of the composition. I absorbed this all willingly, having always had a soft spot for these paintings myself.

Set against this message is Cumming's youth in Scotland, her love of her father, and the ways in which her parents' devotion to art influenced not only her career choice, but the way in which she perceives the world. She is a truly talented author and I hung on every word. I'm not always happy with the results when an author narrates her own audiobook, but Cummings' work on this end was impeccable as well.

If you are interested in art in general, in 17th century Dutch art in particular, or in how it feels to have an artist as your loving parent, I can wholeheartedly recommend this book. I'm so happy to have been able to count it among my last reads of the year. It's a treasure.

[Sue · Rating 5 out of 5]

Thunderclap: A memoir of art and life & sudden death is the story of much more than one man, one artist, who happened to die in the fateful titled Thunderclap in Delft in October of 1654. Carel Fabritius was one of the hundreds who died that day but is actually only one of Laura Cumming’s subjects. Her lens takes in the world of Dutch art, the famous and less famous practitioners, the subjects of the many works she has seen since her childhood, visiting Holland as the child of an artist, knowing museums as a child, seeing art throughout her life.

Cummings does return frequently to Fabritius and to her father to ground her discussion of mortality of the artist vs the possible timelessness of the creations themselves. There are some thoughtful and, for me, eye-opening examinations of specific paintings by Fabritius and Vermeer. Her artistic lens is primarily focused on Fabritius’s A View of Delft.

In part a discussion of Dutch art, part a biography of Fabritius and some other Dutch figures of the 17th century, part a discussion of her family’s early trips to Holland and their impact on her future as well as her father’s, this is also a glimpse into her father’s life as an artist. Cumming combines knowledge of the world of art with a fine writing style to deliver a book that should be read by anyone with an interest in history and/or art.

Thanks to Scribner of Simon & Schuster for providing a copy of this book. This review is my own.

[Kerry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Review after quarterfinals for BookTube prize announced early April. I loved this book. It was the first I read for the Octofinals of the BT prize and it was never nudged out of my number 1 slot.

I love to travel and the Netherlands is a place I often fly into and stay for several days. (their airport tax is lower than many others in Europe so flight prices tend to be lower). This is a book that examines the art of Dutch Arts Golden Age in the 1600's, the short life of the painter Fabritius, and some memories of the author's father and her relationship with him that helps the reader understand her love for art.

I went into it blind and in a few pages I was in love. There are great color plates that show the art, lots of history about the city of Delft, the explosion that is the title of the book and so much more. There are many interesting concepts beautifully brought together by this writer and art critic. It has given me a whole new reason to return to a country I love with fresh eyes.

I did listen to some of this on audio read by author. It was excellent but the references to certain paintings that are in color plates in the book made the print for me a much better companion.

I learned so much and enjoyed the learning that I gobbled it up. Unfortunately the book did not make it through to the Quarterfinals of the BT prize but it is on the Non-fiction shortlist for the Women's Prize as I felt it so well deserved. If you have an interest in Art history particularly Dutch art this is a book you should not miss. A beautiful, beautiful book.

[Mrs. Danvers · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another book that confirms my belief that with passion and a certain ability to write well, you can fascinate me in realms in which I would not have expected.

[Guy · Rating 3 out of 5]

I liked one of Laura Cumming's previous books, The Vanishing Man, very much; I liked Thunderclap rather less.

Perhaps that's partly my own fault: largely ignoring the subtitle (A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death), I was hoping for a relatively straightforward biography of Carel Fabritius set against a wider backdrop of 17th-century Dutch art, and in fairness I did mostly enjoy the parts of the book that fit that description, with some very moving and eloquent commentary on paintings by Fabritius and some of the other usual suspects of the period (even if the prose did sometimes veer into slightly too dark a shade of purple for my personal taste).

The interweaving of the author's own reminiscences, predominantly of growing up as the daughter of an artist and of some early encounters with Dutch art which this facilitated, I found less successful; splicing together memoir and/or travelogue with art history can be done well - see Hisham Matar's A Month in Siena - but here I found it to be a mostly unwelcome distraction. I do wonder if saying (or thinking) so makes me a bad person given how many of these interludes involve clearly very cherished memories of her late father, to whom the book is dedicated, but in my defence the attempt to fuse the two sides of the narrative into a cohesive whole gives us such tired pearls of t-shirt wisdom as "Art is life, life is art" and "a person in a portrait does not age, even if the painting does".

I also found myself sporadically annoyed by Cumming's airy dismissal of anyone who might disagree with either her aesthetic judgement or her speculations about periods in Fabritius's life for which there is scant evidence. The former I object to less, being broadly in favour of passionate and opinionated art criticism in whatever medium (otherwise what's the point?), but the latter poses more of a problem for me; in the absence of hard evidence to the contrary I see little harm in such conjecture in and of itself, and for all I know her reasoning could turn out to be absolutely on the money every time, but her utter disdain for the very suggestion that other art historians' alternative theories might have just as much concrete fact behind them as hers do (i.e. little to none) gets increasingly wearing as the book goes on.

There was a fair amount of this in The Vanishing Man as well, as I recall, but I found it much less grating: perhaps she was less scathing towards dissenters in that instance; perhaps the story of the supposed lost Velázquez portrait of Charles I was simply better suited to that kind of speculation and educated guesswork; or perhaps already being a fully paid up member of the Diego Velázquez fan club made me more forgiving of, or complicit in, such strident evangelism. Whatever the case, Thunderclap had its moments, but wasn't quite what I was hoping for.

[Maxwell · Rating 3 out of 5]

[3.5 stars]

I find reading books by people who are passionate about a specific topic so fascinating. You can feel the love the author has for Dutch paintings, especially from the Golden Age. And I too love their art, though don’t know it as well as she does. Blending that with her personal life and childhood with a painter father herself was interesting as well. The structure of the book didn’t quite work for me because it felt very fluid and free of form; I would’ve personally appreciated a bit more guidance rather than jumping around from topic to topic. But overall a deeply engaging and informational read that reminded me why I love painting so much!

[Britta Böhler · Rating 2 out of 5]

Nope, not for me. I was seriously bored.

[Beth Bonini · Rating 4 out of 5]

4.5 stars

Art can take you anywhere: in life, in the world. And now I am beginning to see that the same is true of art and time.

Laura Cumming is the daughter of an artist and she has worked as an art critic and biographer for most of her professional life. She is trained in a particular kind of observation, and she is skilled at describing what she sees. There are a variety of pleasures to experience in this book, but for me the chief one was definitely the gift of privileged access. She helped me to “see” paintings of the Dutch Golden Age within their historical and social and biographical context, whilst at the same time focusing on the technique and the nuance, the telling detail, in the artist’s style. This book is about more than one thing, but most of all it is about a specific period in art history.

One of the unique things about the book is that it is also a memoir, most specifically about the author’s father. Laura Cumming was introduced to art - she was steeped in the atmosphere of art - in a way that is somewhat rare. One of Cumming’s theses is that art - the making of it, the owning of it, the appreciation of it - became a cultural value in the Dutch Golden Age in a way that it has probably not been before, or since. It’s as if everyone had an artist father, and indeed she describes a variety of Dutch artistic families in which that was the case.

Early on, Cumming states that her father believed that that “all children could draw” and that “drawing was universal.” (My book club debated this belief for a while and most of us had our doubts about it.) What is clear, though, is that being raised by an artist taught Cumming to see in a particular way. Paying attention in the way that an artist pays attention was a family value, so to speak. Perhaps her father was not his art, but his art was him - and this is where Cumming tries to pin down what is enduring about her father and the way he saw the world. Throughout the book she plays with the binaries of what is fixed and enduring, and what is fragile and ephemeral. It may seem tangential or forced to the reader, but she is trying to connect a line between her father James Cumming, a Scottish artist of the 20th century, and Carel Fabritius, a Dutch painter who died in the Delft Thunderclap of 1654, and whose best-known painting “The Goldfinch” was an unlikely survivor of that explosion.

The “Thunderclap” of the title refers to the gunpowder explosion in Delft in 1654, which destroyed much of Delft and killed many of its residents, but she also uses the idea of a “thunderclap” as a moment of invention and/or change. The thunderclap becomes a symbolic device for a moment which changes everything. The Delft Thunderclap was a real event, one that had historical importance and was recorded in both eyewitness and pictorial accounts. Much of this book is a kind of historical reconstruction, though, and it is based on suppositions - mostly Cumming’s, I think, although I’m sure they are also informed by the educated guesswork of other art historians. I was willing to follow the thread of Cumming’s storybuilding, but some other readers might find it a bit too much based in imaginative assumptions. I was made aware of this by other members of my book club, who balked at what seemed to them like overly authoritative liberties.

There is magic in this book - it really did feel brilliant to me at times - but if you are a reader who’s not much interested in art, or reading about art, then you are going to struggle with it. This is not a linear story, with a plot; it’s more like a canvas that is built up with layers of paint and employing a variety of techniques.


Another important thing: this is not an ideal book for the KIndle reader or the Audible listener. I really think you need the book format - liberally sprinkled with the paintings she describes - to properly appreciate and enter into Cumming’s vision.

[Mary · Rating 5 out of 5]

I LOVED "Thunderclap"--Laura Cumming is an extremely engaging and fluid writer who drew me in from the first page and kept me curled up on my couch avidly reading for the next two days. I am always drawn to books that blend memoir with some specific field of study, whether it's English literature as in Rebecca Mead's "My Life in Middlemarch," or goshawk training as in Helen Macdonald's "H is for Hawk," and "Thunderclap"--an analysis of the art of the Dutch Golden Age in general, and that of Carel Fabritius in particular, mixed with some history of the period and memoir about Cumming's life as the daughter of Scottish painter James Cumming--is one of the best I've come across in this genre-bending group. No other writer has ever explained specific paintings for me as vividly and with such idiosyncratic similes as Cumming--I was riveted. Take, for example, her description of one of Dutch artist Adriaen Coorte's still lifes as "a stupdendous painting of five apricots, each an almost incandescent orange, processing bravely towards the cliffhanger of an edge. One leads out front, the others follow behind, with a single apricot propping up the stem of foliage above, like US marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima." Cumming doesn't just use her eyes to view a painting--she hears it as well, as when she describes the "long spiny shell poised on tiptoe" in another Coorte still life, whose "spines tick-tack along the stone, like Prufrock's claws at the bottom of the sea." Gorgeous!

At its heart, however, "Thunderclap" is the story of two artists who toiled in poverty and relative obscurity during lives cut short by tragedy: Carel Fabritius, who is now renowned for his painting of "The Goldfinch" as well as the scant others which survive, but who never achieved fame during his life, which ended at the age of 32 in the Delft gunpowder explosion that gives the book its title; and her father James Cumming, who suffered from a cancer which robbed him of an artist's precious sight in one eye before taking his life when he was only in his 60s. Cumming writes about both men with a beauty, tenderness and insight that suggests she knows not only her father intimately, but Fabritius, too, and after reading "Thunderclap," it's easy to believe that she does.

One last note: This is a beautiful book in so many ways. It is lavishly illustrated with color reproductions of the various paintings Cumming is referencing in a way that I really appreciated, but one that I don't think an e-book edition can do full justice to. I thank NetGalley and Simon & Schuster for providing me with an digital ARC of this title in return for my honest review, but I will be buying the hard copy of this book for myself and, I'm sure, many other people in the future.

[Linty · Rating 3 out of 5]

- the back cover description really does this book a disservice - it's much more about how art connects to life rather than specifically about the thunderclap, though the book is centered around it
- i really liked laura cumming's prose and descriptions of art - i read an arc so did not have the full color pictures but it almost didn't matter because her descriptions were so excellent and full of life!
- the biggest problem here for me was the structure (or perhaps lack thereof)
- there are 3 main threads - dutch art/dutch artists broadly, fabritius's life, and the author's own life and connection to art
- personally i enjoyed the later two far more and didn't really care for the first
- (actually i almost wish it was entirely about her connection to art throughout her life and the influence of her father - those were the best chapters imo)
- we jump from one to the next without much connection between them, felt like there was not much direction
- overall i thought it was too unfocused for so short a book and by the end i was still wondering what exactly the author was trying to communicate to us
**review of an arc that i received via goodreads giveaways**

[Anneliese Tirry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wat een heerlijk boek weer van Laura Cumming.
Al sedert haar jeugd is ze geïntrigeerd door een werk van de Hollandse schilder Carel Fabritius "A view of Delft" en gaat op zoek naar meer info en werken over en door hem. Ze plaatst hem ook tussen zijn tijdgenoten uit die Hollandse Gouden Eeuw, tussen de gerenommeerde landschapsschilders, schilders van stillevens en stadszichten. Je leert heel wat bij in dit boek over die kunst, maar het mooiste van alles is toch dat ze dit alles beschrijft vanuit haar eigen ervaringen en ervaring, en ook ten dele koppelt aan het te korte leven van haar vader die ook schilder was.
Dit is non-fictie die ik het liefste lees, waar de kennis die overgebracht wordt ook gekleurd wordt door de eigen zoektocht en ervaring van de auteur. Dat zegt ze ook ergens in het begin van het boek, dat hoe je een kunstwerk ziet en ervaart, steeds gekleurd wordt door je eigen leven en ervaringen.
En naast dit alles, die rondwandeling door de kunstwerken uit de Gouden Eeuw, leert ze je ook kijken. Hoe vaak ben ik tijdens het lezen van haar beschrijving van een kunstwerk niet gaan terugkijken naar de illustratie. Hoeveel meer dan ik ziet zij, hoe beperkt is mijn eigen kijken. Ze ziet zoveel meer, en wat ze ziet beschrijft ze in een prachtige taal.
Carel Fabritius kwam om in de grote buskruitontploffing in Delft in oktober 1654. Zijn leven kwam abrupt ten einde, net als dat van vele anderen. Bij de beschrijving van deze catastrofe wordt ook de parallel getrokken met de explosie in Beiroet van een aantal jaren geleden. Het moet er gelijkaardig aan toe gegaan zijn.
Dit abrupt afbreken van zovele levens leidt haar ook naar het stellen van levensvragen, over het einde, over vertrouwen, over de wil om door te gaan.
Sommige stukjes uit het boek lijken wel op een miniatuur. Een gedachte, een situatie of een beschrijving wordt met zoveel precisie en aandacht uitgewerkt dat het van een grote schoonheid wordt. Hoe kan het dan ook anders dan dat deze lezer bij het lezen over die plotse dood van Fabritius tranen in de ogen kreeg. Zij kleurt wat in andere boeken een droge mededeling zou kunnen zijn.

En dan toppunt van synchroniciteit! Net deze week hoorde ik in het journaal dat er in Stockholm een schilderij, een zelfportret, aan deze mij eerder onbekende schilder werd toegewezen.

[Tsung · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating book about the Golden Age of Dutch Art, in particular Carel Fabritius (1622-1654) and his untimely death in the massive explosion in Delft in 1654. It is nicely written, factual without being dry, sentimental without being mawkish. Cumming injects her own memoir in between stories of the Dutch masters. Her own accounts are an unobtrusive interlude which loosely connect with the flow. In particular, she pays tribute to her late father James Cumming, an influential Scottish artist.

Delft in the 17th century was an enclave of aspiring artists, churning out hundreds or perhaps thousands of artworks. The Dutch were voracious collectors of these artworks but by the end of the century, many collections vanished overseas. An ensemble cast of both celebrated and unsung artists are featured. While their works might command premium prices today, they often struggled to make a living then. It was also a time when death and penury were common. Carel Fabritius had a particularly hard life. With the tragic deaths of his wife and three children, Cumming finds hidden meaning in his eyes in a self portrait. Not much is known about him and not many of his works are extant today. He was a disciple of Rembrandt but had his own unique talent and flare. He was also senior to the more famous Vermeer. Fabritius' most famous painting is The Goldfinch. But it is the awkwardly titled A View of Delft, with a Musical Instrument Seller's Stall, that Cumming is obsessed with, with its unusual curved perspective. The other painting which Cumming finds enigmatic is The Sentry.

The other Dutch artists from Delft or otherwise:
Hendrick Avercamp and winter scenes.
Ruisdale's landscapes which play-off between light and dark.
Jan van Goyen, the great waterman of Dutch art.
Gerard ter Borch paintings that involve his family as models.
Rachel Ruysch and Maria van Oosterwijck, the flower specialists.
The elusive Adrienne Coorte, master of fruit, vegetable and shells.
Pieter De Hooch, whose art turns upon the human urge to look through apertures into the world beyond.
Disaster artist Egbert Van der Poel who captured the devastation of Delft post-explosion.
And of course, Rembrandt and Vermeer.

Cumming reviews a Vermeer painting titled The Little Street. It is this first time that I am seeing it and it is spectacular, with beautiful, intricate details.

There are tidbits about other people and events such as Antonie Philips van Leeuwenhoek, also from Delft, who is considered the father of microbiology & microscopes.

I also enjoy the tips on how to appreciate art:

We see pictures in time and place. We cannot see them otherwise. They are fragments of our lives, moments of existence that may be as unremarkable as rain or as startling as a clap of thunder.

There is no work of art so transcendent that it is not susceptible to our individuality, either, or our human frailty.

A likeness is never the only reason an artist paints a picture.

We see the mind in the eye. The eye in all its radial beauty is also a picture; a picture in the face.

But if these images are never merely descriptive, nor are they made to be read like proverbs. They are paintings, not text.

[Amy Jane · Rating 1 out of 5]

Nope. I gave the book 25 pages to change my mind but I won’t waste anymore time on it. I read The Vanishing Man by the same author and didn’t like that much, but this is even less enjoyable. Art is very subjective, but art history books shouldn’t feel like you’re having an opinion told to as a fact. The few pages that I did read were quite unbearable, I just don’t like how the author writes.
Apart from the few paragraphs on the life of Carel Fabritius this seems to be an autobiography (not a very interesting one) entwined with a biography of her father (clearly in her opinion a great painter, equal to the Dutch masters she writes of). I don’t really want to know about either, sorry.
A pet hate of mine is repetition of adjectives in books, something even the most amateur of writers should be able to avoid. Also, teeny tiny blurry reproductions aren’t ideal for an art book. A writer on art should know that. Think that’s everything.

[Brynn · Rating 5 out of 5]

"We see pictures in time and place. We cannot see them otherwise. They are fragments of our lives, moments of existence that may be as unremarkable as rain or as startling as a clap of thunder. Whatever we are that day, whatever is going on behind our eyes, or in the forest of our lives, is present in what we see. We see with everything that we are." (7)

"We have blind spots, although paradoxically we can actually perceive them." (101)

"Paintings can take you anywhere, but they are also a land in themselves, a society, a place to be." (118)

"The professor who wrote my report that year took a determined detour from my studies to warn me against always crossing bridges that did not yet exist. I have remembered her words with gratitude, but alas without. much effect. I am still rushing to get it all done before the clock strikes, cannot bear to waste a second of the unknown span of a lifetime, always wondering what is over the horizon, how to solve the future dilemma, never able to separate this moment from the next." (146)

"I suppose this is the miracle of art, and the nobility of those who make it: the transcending of all private suffering." (198)

"The beauty of the painting is in equal tension with its almost unbearable poignancy: the captive bird so enigmatic, a mortal being made apparent to us for all time yet forever imprisoned by the chain (and the picture frame). There is not another painting like it." (201)

"...or the more dignified version that my father often quoted from the English philosopher Francis Bacon: 'The lame in the path outstrip the swift who wander from it.'" (211)

"An explosion could only be depicted as an act of memory until the age of photography." (226)

"Art can take you anywhere: in life, in the world. And now I am beginning to see that the same is true of art and time." (249)

[Rosamund Taylor · Rating 5 out of 5]

A must-read for anyone who is interested in making art, in how art impacts on us, and what it means to be an artist (in the broadest sense). Laura Cumming's father was an artist, and through him she discovered the work of 17th-century Dutch artists, including Fabritius and Vermeer. Fabritius died, age 32, in the "thunderclap" in Delft in 1654: when the entire supply of gunpowder within the small town exploded. He left behind a tiny body of work, including the famous Goldfinch painting, but he continues to grow in fame and acclaim to this day. This book is about sudden deaths, the fragility of life, and why and how we make art as we face the certainty that our lives are finite. It is also a detailed and astute study of many artists of the Dutch Golden Age: Cumming is an art critic, and her keen eye allows her to explore this paintings with insight and depth, as well as putting the paintings into their historical context, and explaining what we do and do not know about this era. It's a very readable book, but is also so full of information that it makes you want to reread it at once.

The book also includes photographs of all the major paintings that Cumming discusses: this is a huge help for the casual reader.

[Sophy H · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting book on all things Dutch artist. This isn't what I thought it was gonna be I'll be honest. I assumed it was going to be all about the explosion and the background and lead up to it. Instead it was more a vignette of mini bio's on each Dutch artist, concentrating on Carel Fabritius. Whilst the man's life was interesting, I'm not sure there was a whole book to be got out of it, hence the cobbling together of mini bio's and talk of the author's own father (also an artist).

It's funny because I waited literally months to get this as a loan from the library, it was reserved by so many people! I wonder if they all enjoyed it and found it to be what they expected.

A 3 star read, enjoyable but not quite what I wanted.

[Sophie (RedheadReading) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyed the discussions on Fabritius's work and Dutch art, but I wasn't as enthralled with the memoir aspect of the narrative and it got a little repetitive. Of course I understand the love Cumming has for her father, but the anecdotes didn't always seem to relate to the discussions on Dutch art so I felt a little unmoored at times, wondering how we got to these points. I definitely preferred Cumming's The Vanishing Man as it had a clearer structure and drive to it, but I really do admire the way Cumming is able to capture the fascination with and emotion of artworks.

[Jana · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this book through The Lonesome Reader (YouTube book reviewer) and it was also Shortlisted for the women's prize for non-fiction.

Luckily my library had a copy and Libby had the e-book so I could both read it on vacation (where I am writing this now) and look at the beautiful color photos which I will do again as soon as I'm back home.

The author writes about her artist father and his/their life in Scotland. He was strongly influenced by Dutch paintings. The parents both passed their love of art to Laura who has now shared it with us so beautifully.

I loved learning about each of the Dutch painters. Special emphasis on Fabritius, but oh so many more too. I took some notes and googled a lot of art, but I may need to get yet another copy of the book to mark up....MY OWN! And I'm on a quest to view more of these artists' works in the future.

EXCELLENT READ. Highly recommend.

[Kathleen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Laura Cumming’s Thunderclap is a somewhat casual book about art, painting, her father, seventeenth century Dutch painters, especially Carel Fabritius, and her life. Cumming, a Scottish writer and journalist, is the daughter of the abstract painter and educator, James Cumming. A childhood trip with her family to the Amsterdam area might have piqued her interest in Dutch painters. Her father taught classes during the day and painted at night, sometimes far into the morning hours.

During the seventeenth century, the Dutch painters flourished. It was the era of Rembrandt, Vermeer and Fabritius. Fabritius was an apprentice or senior assistant in Rembrandt’s studio. Little is known of him other than a few details about his life and early death. Today, “barely a dozen” paintings are identified as his work. Historians don’t know how many are missing*. He is best known for The Goldfinch as it was the subject of the novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt and the movie based on it.

Fabritius was 42 when he died in the Delft thunderclap, a black powder explosion that suddenly killed or injured hundreds of people and destroyed a portion of the city. Some of his paintings might have burned in the explosion.

The book includes many small reproductions of most of the paintings that Cummings discusses, including works from her father.

Thunderclap is a delightful book. I chose to listen to it as it is shortlisted for a Women’s Prize. It was very informative and I appreciated the stories she tells of her own experiences and perceptions.

Cumming narrates her book which seems appropriate as she has a good voice and is sharing so much of herself. Since my audio did not have a PDF of the paintings, I borrowed a hard copy from the library and paged through it both before and after listening to the various sections.

Thunderclap was shortlisted for the 2024 Women’s Prize for Non-fiction.

* Wikipedia’s article on Fabritius lists thirteen works.

[Kim · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting look at the Golden Age of Dutch Art set against the backdrop of the explosion in Delft in 1654 that destroyed much of Delft (the thunderclap could be heard 60 miles away) particularly one artist who was killed in the explosion, Carel Fabritius, famous for his painting, The Goldfinch.
It's also a pleasant memoir of Laura and her family, particularly her dearly departed Dad who was a Scottish artist.

[Dawson Escott · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ultimately just wasn't my cup of tea style wise. Although there are a lot of great passages, and I was interested to read a reinterpretation of/apologia for the oversaturated Dutch Golden Age, this whole book feels a little vaguely put together. The book is composed mainly of 10-15 page little sections, a lot of them meandering pieces on various Dutch artists tangential to Carel Fabritius and tangential, also, to what seem to be the major themes of the book. Considering how little of the book actually focuses directly on Fabritius' and her father's art, it seems like a first draft of this book came up to 100 pages and then she felt it had to be expanded to be publishable. The structure as a whole doesn't make any birds-eye sense-- I'd give 20 bucks to whoever can explain to me convincingly why the book was divided into 3 sections and what function each section served in the overall text. My impression as a reader was that it was arbitrary section after section, vaguely organized around the timeline of Fabritius' life.

The best parts were on her family history and her personal connection to the art of the artists she researched for the book, and I wish even more time was spent on her father's art and life. However, I appreciate that this book did introduce me to Fabritius, whose paintings really are very powerful (The Sentry especially is breathtaking). Her approach to discussing art and art history just does not resonate with me at all. Maybe just because having studied it I'm used to a more thorough, nuanced academic approach than this airy style that relies more on wide-spanning, beautiful-but-inaccurate poetic claims. She spends some time throughout the book dismissing art historical methodology so maybe my feelings just got hurt and I'm seeing red, considering the general rating of the book on here. Regardless, I can't shake the feeling that this book reads better on the sleeve and that as far as the full text goes, the author kind of underdelivered on the book's conceptual promise.

[Asta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Laura Cumming is a daughter of Scottish painter James Cumming.
She grew up surrounded by art, and became an art critic.

"Thunderclap" is a poetic story which interweaves several themes. Laura follows the life and art of Carel Fabritius (who is now probably best known for his painting "The Goldfinch"). There are a lot of stories about painters from the Dutch Golden Age period. There are a lot of personal stories and Laura's interpretation of selected paintings. There are stories about Laura's father and his art.

The book is beautifully written. Laura's love and personal connection to paintings shines from every page.
I liked the illustrations included in the text.
After reading this book, I feel that I could now better appreciate the XVIIth century Dutch art.
Next time I visit the National Gallery, I plan to spend more time in rooms dedicated to Dutch Golden Age, and to meditate in front of several chosen paintings, trying to see what Laura Cumming sees and loves about them.
Oh, and I should visit The Hague, to see all the masterpieces in the Mauritshuis.

"It is possible to be superstitious about pictures; people have raised them like standards in battle, prayed to them, attacked them, carried them about like talismans. We make pilgrimages to see them and are disturbed to find that they are not where they are meant to be but hanging in some other museum, on loan abroad, or just inexplicably gone. Paintings are reliable; they are not supposed to let us down. They absorb all our looking and our feelings without ever changing, unlike living beings."

[Nina · Rating 3 out of 5]

The title refers to the 1654 accidental gunpowder explosion in Delf, so loud it could be heard 70 miles away. Houses collapsed, burying and killing their occupants, including the artist Carel Fabritius. An unknown someone saved his painting of The Goldfinch out of the wreckage. There wasn't a whole lot on Fabritius, but then not much was known about him, he was only 32 when he died, and few of his wonderful paintings survive. There was more about 17th century Dutch art in general and I got introduced to Adriaen Coorte, whose paintings I just love. The book also included unrelated descriptions of the paintings of the author's father, overly detailed descriptions of artworks that were not depicted, and overly flowery memories of the author's young life and her relationship with art. Those parts were boring, so I had to downgrade the rating to a three.

[Shazza Hoppsey · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a great example of the Audiobook complementing the hardcover. The authors enthusiastic reading of “Thunderclap” made me go and buy the book to see all the illustrations. I had been googling them as she read. I look forward to reading the book now as another way of appreciating Cummings memoir mystery.
This book took me back to my art studies at university and to John Bergers “Ways of seeing” and “Thunderclap” would be a interesting text for schools as a compliment to Bergers seminal text for students to consider they way we view art.
I loved her passion towards the artists of the Dutch golden age especially Fabricius.
I am now researching travelling to the Netherlands. This book has inspired me to explore further.
Having now read the book and having been able to see the plates as you read I give it 5 stars again!

[Siegrit]

Heel ander boek dan de flaptekst suggereert. Vooral een collectie beschrijvingen van schilderijen van Hollandse meesters. Waar niks mis mee is, maar wat niet was wat ik verwachtte.

[Elizabeth]

Life is funny. I first heard of this book from Miranda Mills and I didn’t think it sounded like a book I wanted to read. But then I read lots of Betty Neels’ novels set in the Netherlands and suddenly I was interested in a new country and realized how painfully little I knew about it, even though I have a chatty coworker whose family is from Holland. During this time, I also started to see more art work through several art accounts on Instagram and realized how painfully little I knew about art or art history. Suddenly this book came back into view, and I was interested.

Much of this book explores the life and work of Dutch artist Carel Fabritius who was killed in a tragic gunpowder explosion in Delft in 1654. We have very few of his paintings and know very little about him. This was my favorite part of the book. Cumming explores the little we know about Fabritius with a lovely curiosity that brings to life the remarkable Dutch Golden Age of painting. Cumming’s own beloved father was a painter so the story weaves between her relationship with her father and his art, her own experience of Dutch Golden Age paintings, the history of this time and of the tragic explosion, and the shadowy details of a remarkable and under-appreciated artist, Fabritius. The narrative is constructed as finely as a painting, and I appreciate how graciously Cumming shares her expertise and her story.

I still think it rather funny that I read this book. It’s still not “my kind of book”, but that is the beauty of art: it catches us by surprise and opens to us a whole new world.

[Book Club of One · Rating 4 out of 5]

In 1654, the city of Delft was blasted by the explosion of a gunpowder store. It killed hundreds, destroyed and damaged many of the buildings. Among the dead was Carel Fabritius, painter of The Goldfinch, but Johannes Vermeer was spared. In Thunderclap: A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death , art critic and historian Laura Cumming explores this event, these two artists and many other Dutch painters, while weaving in her own youthful reminiscences and her own fathers work and death.

Thunderclap is divided into three sections, each of these made up of essay-like entries that alternate with between many topics, such as the life and work of an artist, 17th century life, Cumming's life or that of her family, or the explosive event. As many of the sections reference specific artworks, the reader is provided with full color reproductions for the majority of the works mentioned. As the book begins with the description of A View of Delft, we are encouraged to view these works and tease out the details from our observations and Cumming's.

Across the book, Cumming is concerned with the frailty of life and question of legacy. In exploring the lives of the artists, she uses what sources are available, some lives more detailed due to their fame or the happenstance of what materials have survived to the present day. These are balanced with snippets of her own life. Traveling through the Netherlands as a youth, or the the formation of her family and her father's work as an artist. Especially in the beginning, Cumming notes that the paintings age differently from humans, as she herself changed across all her different visits to London's National Gallery.

We are not black slates, when we view something, we are bringing to bear all of our experiences and studies. We are moved by what resonates with that background and here Cumming's shares both her research and the what and whys of how art moves her.

A wonderfully vivid exploration of the legacy and meaning of art.

I received a free digital version of this EBook via NetGalley thanks to the publisher.

[Thomas Buocz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading this book felt like the author taking me by the hand and showing me why she loves Dutch art so much. What a great way to learn about it! I thought it was a little repetitive, but I really enjoyed how personal it was. The revelation at the end gave me chills!

[Colin · Rating 5 out of 5]

‘You are never going to read a better book about the experience of art - and of love’ enthuses Philip Hensher on the back of my edition of this wonderful book, and he’s pretty much nailed it as far as I can see. Thunderclap is a remarkable book about many things - the beauty of everyday life and simple things, filial love, mortality, the fickleness of fortune and the importance of living for the moment, the power of great art to move us in surprising ways, and more - but at its heart it’s the story of two artists. Carel Fabritius who died in his studio in Delft, a victim of the catastrophic Gunpowder explosion of 1654 aged only 32 is known for only a handful of surviving paintings (but what paintings they are!), and James Cumming, the author’s father, a driven and visionary Scottish artist of the mid twentieth century are separated by three centuries but united by their unique and uncompromising artistic visions.
The book is beautifully produced on high quality paper which enhances the many colour reproductions of the works of both artists and many others that the author is diverted by. I’ve always loved Dutch and Flemish art and reading Thunderclap has set off a strong impetus to take a trip to the Netherlands to see many of the works mentioned in the book in close up. I’ll certainly be taking a close look at Fabritius’s View of Delft and self portrait in the National Gallery the next time I’m in London.
Thunderclap is full of surprising facts and remarkable insights. One in particular has stayed with me: ‘art proliferated in the new Dutch Republic as nowhere else and never before. Somewhere between 1.3 and 1.4 million paintings were produced by between 600 and 700 painters in not quite two decades at the mid-century, according to scholarly calculations…other estimates run as high as 8 million…we now know that the Dutch hung pictures everywhere…from the cellar to the kitchen and on up to the attic.’ What an astonishingly rich visual culture the Dutch Golden Age must have been.