Laura Cumming.
LAURA CUMMING
THE VANISHING MAN: IN PURSUIT OF VELAZQUEZ (2016)
Winner of the 2016 James Tait Black Prize for Biography.
This prizewinning book, highly praised by the New York Times, entwines a passionate account of the life of the Spanish painter Velasquez with the story of John Snare - a bookseller from Reading. In 1845 Snare found what he believed to be a Velasquez painting of Charles I at the closing down sale of a dilapidated boarding school. He bought it for £8 and spent the rest of his life trying to prove its authenticity. This obsession cost him his prosperity and his reputation, and involved him in costly law suits. Despite handsome offers he refused to sell the painting. Today, mysteriously, its whereabouts are unknown.
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Laura Cumming is a British author and journalist who has worked as the art critic of the Observer, and previously for the Guardian, the New Stateman, the BBC and the Listener. Her parents are the Scottish artists James Cumming and Betty Elston.
