On the morning of 12 October 1654, there was a huge explosion in the town of Delft in the Netherlands. The 32-year-old painter Carel Fabritius, previously a student of Rembrandt’s, had not long sat down at his easel to paint a portrait of a retired churchman. The blast, caused by a nearby gunpowder store accidentally set alight, was so loud it could be heard 70 miles away, and caused the roof of Fabritius’s house to fall in. The injured artist was pulled from the rubble and taken to an infirmary but died a few hours later.
Fabritius – neglected in his lifetime and now best known for his exquisite portrait of a goldfinch chained to a perch – is the subject of Observer art critic Laura Cumming’s Thunderclap, which has been shortlisted for the inaugural Women’s prize for nonfiction. Subtitled “A Memoir of Art and Life and Sudden Death”, it combines Fabritius’s story with that of the author’s late father, James Cumming, the Scottish semi-figurative artist. Cumming Sr was an admirer of Dutch art and passed that love on to his daughter who, during her “volatile and confused” early days in London, would regularly visit the National Gallery to gaze upon Fabritius’s A View of Delft.
Cumming is the narrator, and her recollections of her father – who, like Fabritius, died before his time – are suffused with melancholy. But that sadness is counterbalanced by the author’s luminous descriptions of the paintings of the Dutch golden age, a period often dismissed by art historians but which she brings joyfully to life.
• Thunderclap is available from Penguin Audio, 7hr 39min
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The Midnight’s Children author reads his harrowing, poignant memoir about the 2022 attempt on his life.
Maurice and Maralyn
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The electrifying tale of a husband and wife’s journey across the world by boat, during which they are shipwrecked, is read by Florence Howard.
