CUMMING, Robert 1945-

PERSONAL:

Born May 31, 1945, in Yorkshire, England; son of Alexander Ian (in business) and Beryl Mary (Stevenson) Cumming; married Carolyn Alison Jenkins (a landscape garden designer), June 7, 1975. Education: Trinity Hall, Cambridge, M.A., 1969.

ADDRESSES:

Home—The Old Mill House, Maids Moreton, Buckingham, England.

CAREER:

Tate Gallery, London, England, guide and lecturer, 1974-77; Christie's Education, London, New York, NY, and Paris, France, founder, principal, and chair, 1978-2000; art critic, writer, broadcaster, exhibition curator, and lecturer.

WRITINGS:

Just Look… A Book about Paintings, Scribner (New York, NY), 1980.

Just Imagine: Ideas in Painting, Kestrel Books, 1982.

(Editor) Christie's Guide to Collecting, Prentice-Hall, 1984.

Discovering Turner, Tate Gallery (London, England), 1990.

Annotated Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained, Dorling Kindersley (New York, NY), 1995.

Great Artists, DK Publishing (New York, NY), 1998.

Art: A Field Guide, Knopf (New York, NY), 2001, published in England as A.R.T.: A No-Nonsense Guide to Art and Artists, Everyman (London, England), 2001.

Contributor to Encyclopaedia of Art, Trewin Copplestone and Bernard S. Myers, editors, Macmillan (London, England), 1979. Contributor of articles and reviews to periodicals, including Times Literary Supplement, Times Educational Supplement, Times, Daily Mail, International Herald Tribune, Boston Globe, Country Life, Mental Floss, and Burlington Magazine.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Contributing art section to Condensed Knowledge, to be published by HarperCollins; Treasure Island: How Britain Became (and Remains) the Great Art Treasure House of the World, 1500-2003; 'Almost Famous': The Men and Women Who Made the Art Market 1950-2000.

SIDELIGHTS:

Robert Cumming has parlayed his career as a gallery lecturer, art historian, and art critic into a series of books that present art concepts to readers young and old alike. His Just Look… A Book about Paintings, aimed toward readers ages nine and up, contains examples of the work of artists from seven hundred years past to the present time, and offers definitions of a number of art terms.

Just Look… A Book about Paintings was warmly received by critics such as Barbara Karlin of the Los Angeles Times Book Review. "The concept is marvelous and could certainly stimulate an early interest in art," Karlin remarked. Times Literary Supplement 's Lucy Micklethwait wrote that Cumming "guides the reader around the paintings as if he were in an art gallery.… If the reader is left unsatisfied, and feeling that he ought to have been told more, both about the paintings and the artists, perhaps that is just the sort of curiosity that Mr. Cumming intended to stimulate." In the same vein, Cumming's Annotated Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained "points out that there's much more to a painting than subject and technique," noted Booklist's Stephanie Zvirin.

For an older audience not yet acquainted with the great masters, Cumming produced Art: A Field Guide. Responding to the most common questions Cumming faced while working as a guide at London's Tate Gallery, the book introduces audiences to "art history's biggest names and recurring themes," according to Library Journal 's Eric Bryant. In this large-scale publication, Cumming explores hundreds of artists, styles, techniques, and art movements; Bryant added that such heft and depth of information do not always serve the subject well. Some of the author's notes can be "too terse in style," said Bryant, "and one occasionally gets the feeling that Cumming has rushed ahead to make a point to his peers without giving the basic information his lay audience might need." Carol DeAngelo of School Library Journal, however, found Art "a handy book for novices who would like to have some idea of what to look for during a trip to the art museum."

Cumming told CA: "I am excited by all areas of the fine and decorative arts. I believe the twentieth century was one of the great artistic centuries, and I am fascinated by our present-day view of our historical and cultural inheritance. My writings, teaching, and lecturing are aimed at making our art and our history accessible and exciting. I believe profoundly in the humanizing influence of great art."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Reference Books Annual, 1996, review of Annotated Art: The World's Greatest Paintings Explored and Explained, p. 435.

Booklist, June 1, 1995, Stephanie Zvirin, review of Annotated Art, p. 1743.

Book Report, September-October, 1995, Lesley Farmer, review of Annotated Art, p. 46.

Emergency Librarian, September, 1996, review of Annotated Art, p. 26.

History Today, April, 1995, review of Annotated Art, p. 56.

Library Journal, May 1, 1995, Daniel Lombardo, review of Annotated Art, p. 92; November 1, 2001, Eric Bryant, review of Art: A Field Guide, p. 82.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, August 24, 1980, Barbara Karlin, review of Just Look.

Publishers Weekly, April 6, 1998, review of Great Artists, p. 72; November 5, 2001, "Finding, Buying and Making Art," p. 60.

Reference and Research Book News, May, 1999, review of Great Artists, p. 162.

School Librarian, autumn, 1998, review of Great Artists, p. 162.

School Library Journal, August, 1995, review of Annotated Art, p. 176; July, 1998, review of Great Artists, p. 115; April, 2002, Carol DeAngelo, review of Art, p. 186.

Sunday Telegraph (London, England), March 17, 2002, Nicholas Bagnall, review of A.R.T.

Times Literary Supplement, March 28, 1980, Lucy Micklethwait, review of Just Look; February 15, 2002, Stephen Bury, review of A.R.T.: A No-Nonsense Guide to Art and Artists, p. 31.

Voice of Youth Advocates, October, 1995, review of Annotated Art, p. 243; August, 1996, review of Annotated Art, p. 149; December, 1998, review of Great Artists, p. 378.*