THE LAST PAINTING OF SARA DE VOS

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The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Dominic Smith, Farrar Straus and Giroux, 2016, 281 pp

Summary from Goodreads:
In 1631, Sara de Vos is admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke's in Holland, the first woman to be so recognized. Three hundred years later, only one work attributed to de Vos is known to remain--a haunting winter scene, At the Edge of a Wood, which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, a decision that will haunt her. Because now, half a century later, she's curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters, and both versions threaten to arrive. As the three threads intersect, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present. 

My Review:

This was one of the reading group books I had not already read for July. I am glad we chose it. It is a type of historical novel that takes place in two different eras, 1635 and 1957 with some additional sections set in 2000. 

Sara de Vos was a fictional painter in 1600s Netherlands, loosely based on one of the few female painters of that time. Dominic Smith (Australian and who I thought was female all the time I was reading but is a man) imagines Sara as one of only 25 women who belonged to the Guilds of St Luke, an entity that controlled all aspects of the professional life of artists. It was the era of Rembrandt and Vermeer. Only one of her paintings still exists in the 20th century.

On the upper east side of New York City in 1957, Marty de Groot's favorite painting is stolen from his penthouse during a party and replaced with a nearly flawless forgery. The original painting, At the Edge of a Wood, was painted by Sara de Vos in the early 1600s. The fake was done by Ellie Shipley due to a youthful folly that she will live to regret. 

Ellie is an aspiring young painter living in her squalid Brooklyn apartment amid canvases, linseed oil, and tubes of paint. (You learn a lot about painting in this book and one of the reading group members who is a painter said it was all accurate.) Being mid the dissertation for her PhD in art history at Columbia, she makes ends meet by working as a restorer of old masterpieces.

The rest of the story is told in alternating time periods. Bad things happen to Sara and Ellie. Marty de Groot is quite a jerk. But there are bittersweet happy endings and satisfying resolutions.

I almost always enjoy novels about artists and art of any kind. This was no exception and a huge cut above most of the current bestsellers.

(The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is available in various formats by order from Once Upon A Time Bookstore.)