British art critic and author Laura Cumming (A Face to the World) is an expert in art history and theory, but cares most about how art affects people. In The Vanishing Velázquez, she tells the story of Victorian printer, bookseller and art collector John Snare. At an auction in 1845, he lucked into a grimy portrait of Charles I that he recognized as a painting by Diego Velázquez. He researched and wrote a pamphlet to accompany his London exhibition of the portrait, which stirred up much interest and controversy: Was it genuine? If so, how could a mere bookseller have acquired it? Cumming writes that the pamphlet is "a biography of the picture, but it is also a hymn of praise. He is an evangelist for his Velázquez: ...he wants the world to see and love it as he does." The painting was taken from Snare twice, and he suffered through a dramatic legal trial to establish its ownership and provenance. He then immigrated with it to New York City, where he lived the rest of his life, exhibiting it, refusing to sell it and eventually dying alone in poverty. The portrait vanished in 1898, and it is still missing.
Cumming writes with deep feeling, critical expertise and lovely prose, alternating between the career and thinly documented life of Diego Velázquez, a brilliant and humane artist who she believes can be intimately known through his art, and the story of an equally mysterious art lover who sacrificed everything to live with one great work. --Sara Catterall