The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

February 22, 2016
Smith’s (Bright and Distant Shores) novel centers on two women who live hundreds of years apart yet are inextricably linked. When Dutch artists Barent and Sara de Vos lose their daughter to the plague in 1635, the couple falls into emotional and financial decline. Despite misfortune and the rules of her guild (women don’t do landscapes), Sara completes At the Edge of a Wood, a haunting winter scene. By 1958, wealthy New Yorker Marty de Groot has inherited the painting, but after a charity event in his Upper East Side apartment, he discovers it’s been replaced with a forgery. Marty’s search for the original leads him to Brooklyn and Ellie Shipley, grad student and first-time forger. Years later, Marty and Ellie meet again in Sydney, where Ellie’s academic life is threatened by the prospect of Marty’s original and her fake appearing at the same exhibition. As in Girl with a Pearl Earring, the technical process and ineffable aspects of creating a masterpiece enrich this novel, but Smith had to invent his masterpieces because no works survive by the real-life Sarah van Baalbergen, who was the first woman admitted to the Guild of St. Luke. Smith’s paintings, like his settings, come alive through detail: the Gowanus Expressway, ruins of an old Dutch village, two women from different times and places both able to capture on canvas simultaneous beauty and sadness. Agent: Emily Forland, Brandt & Hochman Literary.

March 15, 2016
Smith's latest novel (Bright and Distant Shores, 2011, etc.) 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.Marty de Groot, a Manhattan lawyer plagued by infertility and the stuffiness that comes from centuries of familial wealth, has one special thing to his name: a collection of 17th-century Dutch paintings, including rare pieces by female artists of the era. At the Edge of the Wood is the only work attributed to Sarah de Vos, and it's hung above the marital bed in Marty's Park Avenue triplex for generations. Until one fall day in 1957 it's plucked off his wall and replaced by a meticulously executed forgery. Behind this deception is not a mastermind but an Australian graduate student named Ellie Shipley, who was approached by a secretive art dealer to replicate the painting. Ellie lives and thinks like a member of the Dutch golden age, boiling rabbit pelts in her claustrophobic Brooklyn apartment for glue, pulling apart antique canvases to understand their bones, and building them up again layer by layer. This is a woman who sees herself in de Vos and would do anything to merge their legacies together. In showing how this is a monumental occasion in Ellie's life, a truly intimate experience for her, Smith turns forgery into art, replication into longing, deceit into an act of love: Ellie works in "topography, the impasto, the furrows where sable hairs were dragged into tiny painted crests to catch the light. Or the stray line of charcoal or chalk, glimpsed beneath a glaze that's three hundred years old." The narrative stretches from a period of grief in de Vos' life that compelled her to paint At the Edge of the Wood, to 1950s New York to the year 2000 at a museum in Sydney where original and forgery meet--in turn reconnecting Ellie with Marty. "Here comes Marty de Groot, the wrecking ball of the past": just one example of the suspense Smith manages to carry throughout his narrative, suspense bound up in brilliant layers of paint and the people who dedicate their lives to appreciating its value.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.

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Starred review from November 1, 2015

In this fine novel from Smith (Bright & Distant Shores), the lives of three people converge over three centuries, tethered by a rare work of art. During the Dutch golden age of painting, artist Sara de Vos creates a haunting image on canvas. In time, it will become her only remaining work. Years later, the painting is inherited by a wealthy, somewhat restless lawyer in New York City. The work is then unwittingly forged by an Australian student of art history; the original is stolen and replaced by the copy. Fifty years later, the paintings, the forger, and the lawyer come together seemingly via an act of synchronicity. Hovering throughout the story is the question: Does this painting somehow possess an eerie influence over the people who have encountered it? 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. VERDICT 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.--Susanne Wells, Indianapolis P.L.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from January 1, 2016
In this wonderfully engaging novel, centered on the paintings of fictional seventeenth-century Dutch artist Sara de Vos, Smith immerses the reader in three vibrant time periods. In 1950s New York, a wealthy lawyer discovers his prized de Vos painting has been replaced with a fake, while the forger of the painting grapples with the moral complexities of her recent choices. Both characters reappear in the present day, as the profound effect of the painting on their lives becomes clear. Woven among these scenes are glimpses into the tragic life of de Vos, the first woman master painter admitted into the Guild of St. Luke in Holland. When the story begins, only her haunting winter landscape is known, but as the story progresses, more is revealed, including the inspirations for her greatest works. 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.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2016, American Library Association.)