Tuesday | May 20 | 5:30 PM
Season 6 of the AMA Art Lovers Book Club continues on May 20 withThe Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller’s Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece by Laura Cumming.
RSVP HERE.
The bimonthly club meets at 5:30 pm in the Willson Auditorium at the Albany Museum of Art. The meetings are free and open to everyone. There is no formal membership, just a love for art, books, and good conversation.
Registration is free for everyone and helps us ensure adequate seating is ready when you arrive. You may also contact AMA Director of Education and Public Programming Annie Vanoteghem by calling 229.439.8400.
ABOUT THE BOOK
When John Snare, a 19th-century provincial bookseller, traveled to a liquidation auction, he found a vivid portrait of King Charles I that defied any explanation. The Charles of the painting was too young to be king and to have been painted by the Flemish painter to whom the piece was attributed.
Snare’s research brought him to Diego Velázquez, whose long-lost portrait of Prince Charles has eluded art experts for generations. Velázquez (1599–1660) was the official painter of the Madrid court during the time the Spanish Empire teetered on the edge of collapse. When Prince Charles of England proposed a marriage with a Spanish princess, he allowed just a few hours to sit for his portrait. Snare believed only Velázquez could have been the artist, but in making his theory public, he was ostracized and forced to choose between art and family.
A thrilling investigation into the complex meaning of authenticity and the unshakable determination that drives both artists and collectors of their work, The Vanishing Velázquez is a fascinating tale of mystery and detection, of tragic mishaps and mistaken identities, of class, politics, snobbery, crime, and almost farcical accident that reveals how one historic masterpiece was crafted and lost, and how far one man would go to redeem it.
THE 2024-25 READING LIST
AMA Art Lovers Book Club meetings are set for every two months on the third Tuesday so that club members have plenty of time to obtain and read the books before each session.
Here is the complete reading list for 2024-25. Books were selected through an online vote by book club participants:
- July 16: Stealing Rembrandts: The Untold Stories of Notorious Art Heists by Anthony M. Amore.
- September 17: The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath..
- November 19: The Life & Art of Athos Menaboni by Barbara C Taylor, Athos Menaboni.
- January 21: Chasing Me to My Grave: An Artist’s Memoir of the Jim Crow South by Winfred Rembert.
- March 18: The Judgment of Paris: The Revolutionary Decade That Gave the World Impressionism by Ross King.
- May 20: The Vanishing Velázquez: A 19th Century Bookseller’s Obsession with a Lost Masterpiece by Laura Cumming. (Register HERE.)