Laura Cumming is the art critic of '' The Observer'' newspaper, a position she has held since 1999. Before that she worked for '' The Guardian'', the '' New Statesman'' and the BBC. 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 Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez (baptized June 6, 1599August 6, 1660) was a Spanish painter, the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain and Portugal, and of the Spanish Golden Age. He was an individualistic artist of th ...

in 1845. ''The Vanishing Man'' was a ''New York Times'' bestseller and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2017.

Early life

Cumming is the daughter of the Scottish artists James Cumming and

Betty Elston Betty or Bettie is a name, a common diminutive for the names Bethany and Elizabeth. In Latin America, it is also a common diminutive for the given name Beatriz, the Spanish and Portuguese form of the Latin name Beatrix and the English name Beatri ...

, his wife. A memoir based on her mother's disappearance as a child, ''On Chapel Sands: My mother and Other Missing Persons'', was published in July 2019 by Chatto. It was shortlisted for the 2019 Baillie Gifford Prize.

Career

Cumming was literary editor of the BBC's '' The Listener'', assistant editor of the '' New Statesman'', and the presenter of ''

Nightwaves ''Free Thinking'' is a radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 3 as part of their "After Dark" late night programming. The programme is a rebranded version of ''Night Waves'', "Radio 3's flagship arts and ideas programme". ''Night Waves'' was ...

'' on

BBC Radio 3 BBC Radio 3 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC. It replaced the BBC Third Programme in 1967 and broadcasts classical music and opera, with jazz, world music, Radio drama, drama, High culture, culture and the arts ...

. Cumming has written two books on art. Her work on self-portraits, ''A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits'' (2009), was praised by Serena Davies in '' The Daily Telegraph'' for seeking to "persuade us, with sumptuous superlatives, how great her subjects are" rather than baffling the reader with art theory as some other works do. Her work on the discovery of a lost

portrait by

John Snare John Snare (christened 31 July 1808 born c.1811, died 10 January 1884) was a bookseller and publisher from Reading, England, whose life was dominated by the discovery at a country house auction in 1845 of a hitherto lost Diego Velázquez painti ...

in 1845, ''The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez'' (2016), was described by Honor Clerk in '' The Spectator'' as "a study in obsession, a paean of praise to an artist of genius, a detective story and, for the author, an exorcism of grief". Fisun Güner, in '' The Independent'' praised the "beautifully compelling accounts of Velázquez's paintings" that revealed as much about Cumming's own relationship with the work of Velázquez as it did about the ostensible subject of the book. Jonathan Beckman in ''The Times'', however, felt that the book was "breathless" and that its source materials (or lack thereof) didn't completely support the weight that Cumming placed on them. The book was serialised on BBC Radio 4 in a reading by Siobhan Redmond. Cumming's book ''On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons'', published in 2019, was shortlisted for the Costa Book award in the Biography and Memoir category, 2019.

Selected publications

*''Julian Barnes''. Book Trust in association with the British Council, London, 1990. *''A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits''.

HarperPress HarperCollins Publishers LLC is one of the Big Five English-language publishing companies, alongside Penguin Random House, Simon & Schuster, Hachette, and Macmillan. The company is headquartered in New York City and is a subsidiary of News Co ...

, London, 2009. *''The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez''.

Chatto & Windus Chatto & Windus is an imprint of Penguin Random House that was formerly an independent book publishing company founded in London in 1855 by John Camden Hotten. Following Hotten's death, the firm would reorganize under the names of his business ...

, London, 2016, ; published in the United States as ''The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th-century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece''

Scribner Scribner may refer to: Media * Charles Scribner's Sons, also known as Scribner or Scribner's, New York City publisher * ''Scribner's Magazine'', pictorial published from 1887–1939 by Charles Scribner's Sons, then merged with the ''Commentator ...

, New York, 2016, . *''On Chapel Sands: My Mother and Other Missing Persons''. Chatto & Windus, London, 2019,

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cumming, Laura Living people British art critics British journalists British non-fiction writers Year of birth missing (living people)