Recommendations from our site
“It examines the life and work of Carel Fabritius, the 17th-century Dutch artist – who painted ‘The Goldfinch’, among other things. He actually only left just over a dozen paintings, and has been under-recognised in assessments of the Golden Age of Art. But it’s also an examination of Cumming’s own father’s work – James Cumming, an artist in his own right. The two disparate stories are drawn together, I suppose, by what one might call memoir. There’s a connection, which is Laura herself. It’s a work of admiration of both people, and it has this incredible structure which unfurls and pulls in all manner of things along the way.” Read more...
Recent Nonfiction Highlights: The 2024 Women’s Prize Shortlist
Suzannah Lipscomb, Historian
Our most recommended books
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The Lives of the Artists
by Giorgio Vasari -
The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art
by Joseph Leo Koerner -
Ways of Seeing
by John Berger -
The Book of the Courtier
by Baldesar Castiglione -
The Art of Describing: Dutch Art in the Seventeenth Century
by Svetlana Alpers -
David Tennant and the Gargoyle Years
by Michael Luke