Magnificently overcoming the onset of Covid and the vagaries of technology, Laura Cumming gave an inspirational illustrated talk, bringing vibrantly to life paintings of the Dutch ‘Golden Age’, in particular, those of Carel Fabritius, the subject of her award winning book, ‘Thunderclap: a memoir of art and life and sudden death’.
Laura Cumming, chief art critic of The Observer since 1999, was introduced by Vincent Stokes as a ‘gifted observer’, who is able to ‘travel into paintings’. In her talk she shared her life-long passion for art, encouraging us to bring our own perspectives to the way we see and interpret artists’ works.
She began by reading a passage from Thunderclap, which describes in detail Fabritius’ painting of a lute seller in 17th century Delft and the profound effect his image had on her as a twenty two year old working in London. She visited the painting in the National Gallery ‘hundreds of times’ and described the image as ‘the man of my dreams’.
Her enthusiastic description of the slide of Fabritius’ self portrait drew our attention to the colours,’green to gold, tawny blue’ and the ‘very kissable mouth’. For her, it is as though ‘he has opened the shutters to let in the light on Rembrandt’: a first step towards her fascination with the Golden Age of Dutch art, which she went on to share with the audience.
We were treated to slides of Coorte’s Bunch of Asparagus, ‘a black and white explosion’, in itself a ‘thunderclap’ for her; Franz Hals’ wealthy brewer; Jan van Goyen’s paintings capturing ‘liquidity’ of light; Avercamp’s circular winter scene, the quintessential Christmas card, still popular today and interiors by De Witt, the ‘discoverer of cinematic light’. For her, Vermeer’s View of Delft, far from being ’photographic’, is a ‘transcendent’ work, ‘more beautiful than the scene it represents’.
It was fascinating to learn how prolific Dutch painters were. At least eight million paintings were produced in twenty years and people from all walks of life bought art. The wealthy brewer depicted by Franz Hals displayed 237 paintings in his house, 67 in one room. 1,117 paintings by Jan van Goyen exist today; he probably made many more. All these pictures, yet so many of the artists died in penury.
Astonishingly, Cumming’s research reveals that Fabritius’ The Goldfinch bears blast marks suggesting that it was not destroyed by the ‘thunderclap’, because the paint was still wet. Given that the explosion destroyed Fabritius himself and much of Delft on 12th October, 1654, it is a miracle that it survived.
Cumming concluded by saying that her aim was ‘to praise, to enthuse, to encourage people to look and look and look’ so that paintings ‘enter our lives’ and change the way we think. Her enthusiasm is infectious.
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