Background

Laura Cumming was born in the United Kingdom. She is the daughter of the Scottish artist James Cumming and his wife, the artist Betty Elston.

Career

Laura Cumming has been chief art critic of the Observer since 1999. Before that she worked for The Guardian and the New Statesman and the BBC. She was also literary editor of the BBC's The Listener and the presenter of Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3.

In addition to her career in journalism, Cumming has written two well-received books on self-portraits in art and the discovery of a lost portrait by Diego Velazquez in 1845. Her work on self-portraits, A face to the world, was published in 2009. Her work on the discovery of a lost Diego Velazquez portrait by John Snare, The vanishing man: In pursuit of Velazquez, was published in 2016 and was serialised on BBC Radio 4 in a reading by Siobhan Redmond. Cumming's most recent work is On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons, which came out in July 2019. It uncovers the mystery of her mother’s disappearance as a child.

Achievements

• Laura Cumming is a prolific author. Her best known work is The Vanishing Man, which was a New York Times bestseller and won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize in 2017.

Works

More photos

• book

  • A Face to the World: On Self-Portraits

    (Focusing on the art of self-portraiture, this effortlessl...)

    2009
  • On Chapel Sands: My mother and other missing persons

    (In the autumn of 1929, a small child was kidnapped from a...)

    2019
  • The Vanishing Man: In Pursuit of Velazquez 2016

Connections

Cumming is married to Dennis Sewell, writer, broadcaster and contributing editor of The Spectator. They have twin daughters.

Father:

James Cumming

Mother:

Betty Elston

Spouse:

Dennis Sewell