Laura Cumming

Her mother, Betty, was adopted at age 3 by an older (49 years old) couple and had a strict, restricted childhood. She grew up knowing she was adopted but not in a warm “you made us a family” way. It was a shameful secret. Her father had a temper and ruled the family. At 16 he took her out of school to work at a stultifying job at the village post office but eventually her art talent was recognized by a teacher and she was able to leave for art school.
When she had her own children she became curious about her origins and returned to her hometown on the east coast of England to seek more. She found her birth certificate (with the father’s name left blank, though it was obvious from the resemblance that her adoptive father was her birth father). A solicitor eventually showed her a legal document between her parents and a woman named Hilda Blanchard. Her mother. In this document, Hilda agrees that she will never contact Betty on pain of having to repay all of her expenses up to that point – an impossible task.
Betty and her adult daughter and son returned to the town and eventually found someone who would talk to them about her childhood. That’s when she learned that as a young child she was taken from a beach but turned up 5 days later, unharmed and wearing new clothes. Her parents had never spoken of this.
As we read the story, it becomes obvious who the kidnapper would have been. Cummings, who’s an art critic, tells the story bit by bit and writes thoughtfully about photography, memory, small towns, and family. I enjoyed this book very much.… (more)

This is another book I selected from the long list for the inaugural Women’s Prize for Nonfiction. I thought from the description it would focus on the 1654 explosion when a large store of gunpowder destroyed half the city of Delft – much like what happened in Beirut in 2020. Instead it was much deeper and richer than I expected.

The book itself is nominally about Dutch painter Carel Fabritius, who was killed in the Thunderclap of 1654 and left behind only a few paintings. Fabritius was a student of Rembrandt and a possible stepping stone to Vermeer. The few paintings he left behind, including The Goldfinch are masterful. In the last few pages of the book, we are let into a secret from microanalysis of The Goldfinch.

The author illuminates the Golden Age of Dutch Painting for us, letting us see the day to day lives and environs of many painters, most living in Delft.

Cumming was much influenced by her father, Scottish painter James Cumming and his love for art which he richly embedded in his daughter. And so this book is also partly memoir as she recounts her father and her cherished experiences as she saw what living ones art entails.

This book is highly readable – and for me, not knowing much of Dutch art, it was absolutely fascinating. The reproductions scattered through the book are lovely. I read a hardcopy edition of the book, published in the US by Scribner and I must say the paper is beautiful quality: heavy and slick. It feels so nice to the touch and is perfect for the fifty or so illustrations. A near perfect smallish book.… (more)

“Life reproves the imagination: look closer.” So Cummings does. This is the story of her mother, who was inexplicably kidnapped from the beach, aged three, and safely recovered twelve days later. However, it's not a straightforward narrative, beginning at her birth and ending in her old age, and progressing through schooldays, marriage, adult life. For Betty (Laura Cummings' mother), life was something of a mystery, posing unanswered questions which Laura painstakingly unpicks, but not necessarily in date order. Her first point of reference is that adored mother Betty, and her own brief memoir. But there are the villagers from the community where Betty was brought up, and the secrets they kept. There are legal documents. There are photographs. And there is Laura's own willingness not to take what she finds out at face value. Her references to the work of artists whom she feels illuminate her story, either by referencing Betty's own home landscape, or by having something to say about the kind of community in which she lived - Brueghel's 'The Fall of Icarus' - are the jewels of this book, enriching and bringing colour to an already involving story. The passages examining Betty's father George's photographic portrait of her mother Veda are among the most memorable in the book.

Finally, Laura's recognition that people are nor simply heroes or villains (though her mother remains her hero) brings the book to a thought provoking conclusion. Baddies turn out to have their redeeming features. Goodies keep silent. Humans are complicated. This is a book that may stay with you once you have turned the last page.… (more)

Laura Cumming is an art historian and she tries to solve the mysteries surrounding the life of Dutch painter Carol Fabritius. Fabritius died tragically in 1654 in Delft when a store house of gunpowder exploded and destroyed about half of the small city. He was a student of Rembrandt but developed his own unique style although Cumming points out that very few of his paintings have survived. As well as describing the work of Fabritius, Cumming tells the reader about the art of her own father and the works and styles of many Dutch artists. The descriptions are wonderful and give the reader a sense of the life and preoccupations of Dutch society during the 1600's. Cumming pays tribute to her father with her writing on his life . I really enjoyed reading this book. There are a number of reproductions of the art that Cumming describes… (more)