Last Painting of Sara de Vos (Smith) - Book Reviews

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