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The Vanishing Man
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  • Published: 3 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780099587040
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

The Vanishing Man

In Pursuit of Velazquez

Formats & editions
EBook
7 Jan 2016
Audiobook
24 Mar 2016
Paperback
3 Jan 2017
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The captivating and mysterious tale of a Victorian bookseller whose fate was changed forever by the great painter Velazquez

WINNER OF THE JAMES TAIT BLACK BIOGRAPHY PRIZE
SHORTLISTED FOR THE RATHBONES FOLIO PRIZE
LONGLISTED FOR THE BAILLIE GIFFORD PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION

Selected as a Book of the Year in the Herald

In 1845, a Reading bookseller named John Snare came across the dirt-blackened portrait of a prince at a country house auction. Suspecting that it might be a long-lost Velázquez, he bought the picture and set out to discover its strange history - a quest that led from fame to ruin and exile.

Fusing detection and biography, this book shows how and why great works of art can affect us, even to the point of mania. And on the trail of John Snare, Cumming makes a surprising discovery of her own. But most movingly, The Vanishing Man is an eloquent and passionate homage to the Spanish master Velázquez, bringing us closer to the creation and appreciation of his works than ever before.
  • Published: 3 January 2017
  • ISBN: 9780099587040
  • Imprint: Vintage
  • Format: Paperback
  • Pages: 320
  • RRP: $32.99
Categories:

About the author

Laura Cumming

Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Her books include A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits (2009) and The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velázquez (2016) which won the James Tait Black Biography Prize. Her family memoir, On Chapel Sands: my Mother and other Missing Persons (2019) was a Sunday Times bestseller and shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford, Costa and Rathbone's Folio prizes.

LC

Also by Laura Cumming

Thunderclap
On Chapel Sands
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Praise for The Vanishing Man

The Vanishing Man is a riveting detective story and a brilliant reconstruction of an art controversy, but it is also a homage to the art of Velázquez, written by a critic who remains spellbound by his genius, as readers will be spellbound by this book

Colm Tóibín

An extraordinary story ... This terrific book is many things, a study in obsession, a paean of praise to an artist of genius, a detective story and, for the author, an exorcism of grief. Writing like Helen Macdonald in H is for Hawk, in the wake of the death of her father, Cumming pours heart and soul in The Vanishing Man and she has produced something of which her artist father, James Cumming, would be more than proud

Spectator