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Laura Cumming is the art critic of ''
The Observer ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. It is a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' and '' The Guardian Weekly'', whose parent company Guardian Media Group Limited acquired it in 1993. First published in 1791, it is the ...
'' newspaper, a position she has held since 1999. Before that she worked for ''
The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...
'', the ''
New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...
'' and the
BBC #REDIRECT BBC #REDIRECT BBC Here i going to introduce about the best teacher of my life b BALAJI sir. He is the precious gift that I got befor 2yrs . How has helped and thought all the concept and made my success in the 10th board exam. ...
...
. 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 in 1845. ''The Vanishing Man'' was a ''New York Times'' bestseller and won the
James Tait Black Memorial Prize The James Tait Black Memorial Prizes are literary prizes awarded for literature written in the English language. They, along with the Hawthornden Prize, are Britain's oldest literary awards. Based at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland, Uni ...
in 2017.


Early life

Cumming is the daughter of the Scottish artists James Cumming and Betty Elston, 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 The Baillie Gifford Prize for Non-Fiction, formerly the Samuel Johnson Prize, is an annual British book prize for the best non-fiction writing in the English language. It was founded in 1999 following the demise of the NCR Book Award. With its m ...
.


Career

Cumming was literary editor of the BBC's '' The Listener'', assistant editor of the ''
New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...
'', 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 b ...
'' on BBC Radio 3. Cumming has written two books on art. Her work on
self-portraits A self-portrait is a representation of an artist that is drawn, painted, photographed, or sculpted by that artist. Although self-portraits have been made since the earliest times, it is not until the Early Renaissance in the mid-15th century tha ...
, ''A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits'' (2009), was praised by Serena Davies in ''
The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', known online and elsewhere as ''The Telegraph'', is a national British daily broadsheet newspaper published in London by Telegraph Media Group and distributed across the United Kingdom and internationally. It was f ...
'' 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 Diego Velázquez portrait by John Snare in 1845, ''The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez'' (2016), was described by Honor Clerk in ''
The Spectator ''The Spectator'' is a weekly British magazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world. It is owned by Frederick Barclay, who also owns ''The ...
'' 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 ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...
'' 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 BBC Radio 4 is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. It broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history from the BBC' ...
in a reading by
Siobhan Redmond Siobhan Redmond, ( ; born 27 July 1959) is a Scottish actress, a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and known for various stage, audio and television roles. Early life Siobhan Redmond was born on 27 July 1959 in the Tollcross area of ...
. 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, London, 2009. *''The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez''. Chatto & Windus, London, 2016, ; published in the United States as ''The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th-century Bookseller's Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece'' Scribner, 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)