The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
Dominic Smith, 2016
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
304 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780374106683
Summary
A rare 17th-century painting links three lives, on three continents, over three centuries in the last painting of Sara de Vos, an Exhililarating new novel from Dominic Smith.
Amsterdam, 1631:
Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the city’s Guild of St. Luke.
Though women do not paint landscapes (they are generally restricted to indoor subjects), a wintry outdoor scene haunts Sara: She cannot shake the image of a young girl from a nearby village, standing alone beside a silver birch at dusk, staring out at a group of skaters on the frozen river below. Defying the expectations of her time, she decides to paint it.
New York City, 1957:
The only known surviving work of Sara de Vos, At the Edge of a Wood, hangs in the bedroom of a wealthy Manhattan lawyer, Marty de Groot, a descendant of the original owner. It is a beautiful but comfortless landscape.
The lawyer’s marriage is prominent but comfortless, too. When a struggling art history grad student, Ellie Shipley, agrees to forge the painting for a dubious art dealer, she finds herself entangled with its owner in ways no one could predict.
Sydney, 2000:
Now a celebrated art historian and curator, Ellie Shipley is mounting an exhibition in her field of specialization: female painters of the Dutch Golden Age.
When it becomes apparent that both the original At the Edge of a Wood and her forgery are en route to her museum, the life she has carefully constructed threatens to unravel entirely and irrevocably. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Birth—N/A
• Where—Sydney, Australia
• Education—M.F.A., University of Texas-Austin
• Awards—(see below)
• Currently—lives in Austin, Texas, USA
Dominic Smith grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in Austin, Texas. He holds an MFA in writing from the Michener Center for Writers at the University of Texas at Austin. His short fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and appeared in numerous journals and magazines, including Atlantic Monthly.
Recognition
Dominic has been the recipient of the Dobie Paisano Fellowship, the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Prize, the Gulf Coast Fiction Prize, and a new works grant from the Literature Board of the Australia Council for the Arts.
Novels
His 2006 debut novel The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre was selected for the Barnes and Noble Discover Great New Writers Program. It also received the Steven Turner Prize for First Fiction from the Texas Institute of Letters.
Dominic's second novel, The Beautiful Miscellaneous, came out in 2007 and was a Booklist Editors' Choice. It has been optioned for a film by Southpaw Entertainment.
His third novel—Bright and Distant Shores—was published in 2011. It was named by Kirkus Reviews as one of the Best Books of 2011 and chosen by the American Library Association for its annual reading list. In Australia, it was shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year and the Vance Palmer Prize, two of Australia's foremost literary awards.
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, his fourth novel, was published in 2016 to excellent reviews.
Dominic serves on the fiction faculty in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers in Asheville, North Carolina. He has taught recently at the University of Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University, and Rice University. (Adapted from the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The genius of Smith’s book is not just the caper plot but also the interweaving of three alternating timelines and locations to tell a wider, suspenseful story of one painting’s rippling impact on three people over multiple centuries and locations.
Ian Shapira - Washigton Post
[L]ustrous.... The Last Painting braids Ellie's story together with the life of the titular Sara, a fictionalized amalgam of the few Dutch women painters...[through] skillful plotting and effortless prose.... Though the characters' realizations about their motives are at times belabored, the shifting perspectives of The Last Painting keep epiphanies from feeling too neat. Both melancholy and defiant, Smith's novel leaves us with the sense that the truths we make are no less valuable for being inexact. As Sara points out, "Surely, this is the way of all art.
Anna Clark - Chicago Tribune
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is a deeply researched, beautifully written, intellectually absorbing novel that also has the qualities of a page-turner...a tremendous story of art, deception, love, ambition and the place of women in the world, and in history. From the opening pages you know you are in the hands of a writer at the top of his game.
Stephen Romei - Australian
Smith’s novel centers on two women who live hundreds of years apart yet are inextricably linked.... [T]he technical process...enrich this nove.... Smith’s paintings, like his settings, come alive through detail:...two women from different times and places both able to capture on canvas simultaneous beauty and sadness.
Publishers Weekly
(Starred review.) Highly evocative of time and place, this stunning novel explores a triumvirate of fate, choice, and consequence and is worthy of comparison to Tracy Chevalier's Girl with a Pearl Earring and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch . . . Just as a painter may utilize thousands of fine brushstrokes, Smith slowly creates a masterly, multilayered story that will dazzle readers of fine historical fiction.
Library Journal
(Starred review.) [W]onderfully engaging.... Rich in historical detail, the novel explores the immense challenges faced by women in the arts (past and present), provides a glimpse into the seedy underbelly of the art world across the centuries, and illustrates the transformative power and influence of great art. An outstanding achievement, filled with flawed and fascinating characters. —Kerri Price
Booklist
Smith’s latest novel is a rich and detailed story that connects a 17th-century Dutch painting to its 20th-century American owner and the lonely but fervent art student who makes the life-changing decision to forge it. This is a beautiful, patient, and timeless book, one that builds upon centuries and shows how the smallest choices—like the chosen mix for yellow paint—can be the definitive markings of an entire life.
Kirkus Reviews
Discussion Questions
1. What does At the Edge of a Wood mean to Sara, Marty, and Ellie? How did your reactions to the painting shift throughout the novel?
2. How does the memory of Kathrijn influence Sara’s art? What are Sara’s perceptions of mortality and the natural world?
3. What does the novel reveal about the distinctions between artists and art historians, and between collectors and dealers? Is art forgery a form of art?
4. What empowers Ellie and Sara despite the chauvinism they face when they launch their respective careers?
5. Would you want the Rent-a-Beats at your party? In their disdain for capitalism, do they do a good job of exposing the plight of someone like Sara?
6. As you read about the great lengths taken to transport the painting from the museum in Leiden, what came to mind about the value of a fake? What value should Ellie’s painstakingly created painting possess? How does the muddy nature of falsehood and illusion shape her relationship with Marty?
7. As you observed the stark difference between the Guild of St. Luke in the Netherlands and the modern auction scene in Manhattan, what did you discover about the economics of the art world? Has the patronage system that provided Sara with a benefactor (through Barent’s creditor, Cornelis Groen) disappeared?
8. If you had been in Ellie’s situation, would you have accepted Gabriel’s invitation to “restore” At the Edge of a Wood?
9. Discuss the three marriages portrayed in the book: Sara and Barent, Sara and Tomas, Marty and Rachel. When does love flourish in the novel? What causes it to fade?
10. What is Marty seeking on his sojourn to Sydney? What realizations emerge when he and Ellie are reunited? What misconceptions are laid to rest?
11. Beyond additional paintings, what is Ellie seeking when she makes the pilgrimage to Edith Zeller’s bed-and-breakfast?
12. Consider the author’s decision to make the Dutch Golden Age his backdrop. What particular qualities permeate the novel as a result of that choice.
13. Does At the Edge of a Wood convey any messages that endure across the centuries? What would Sara think if she could have known the fate of her work?
14. How does The Last Painting of Sara de Vos enhance the portraits of humanity presented in other novels by Dominic Smith that you have enjoyed?
(Questions issued by the publisher.)
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