The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: A Novel
- ISBN-10
- 0374714045
- ISBN-13
- 9780374714048
- Series
- The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
- Category
- Fiction
- Pages
- 304
- Language
- English
- Published
- 2016-04-05
- Publisher
- Sarah Crichton Books
- Author
- Dominic Smith
Description
“Written in prose so clear that we absorb its images as if by mind meld, “The Last Painting” is gorgeous storytelling: wry, playful, and utterly alive, with an almost tactile awareness of the emotional contours of the human heart. Vividly detailed, acutely sensitive to stratifications of gender and class, it’s fiction that keeps you up at night — first because you’re barreling through the book, then because you’ve slowed your pace to a crawl, savoring the suspense.” —Boston Globe A New York Times Bestseller A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice A RARE SEVENTEENTH-CENTURY PAINTING LINKS THREE LIVES, ON THREE CONTINENTS, OVER THREE CENTURIES IN THE LAST PAINTING OF SARA DE VOS, AN EXHILARATING 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.
Get the book
Other editions
Similar books
-
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
By Dominic SmithIn this extraordinary novel, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, Australian writer Dominic Smith brilliantly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the ...
-
The Electric Hotel: A Novel
By Dominic SmithA sweeping work of historical fiction from the New York Times–bestselling author Dominic Smith, The Electric Hotel is a spellbinding story of art and love.
-
Bright and Distant Shores: A Novel
By Dominic SmithAn epic and ambitious story that brings to mind E.L. Doctorow, with echoes of Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, Bright and Distant Shores is a wondrous achievement by a writer known for creating compelling fiction from the fabric of ...
-
The Beautiful Miscellaneous: A Novel
By Dominic Smith“A home brewer should have better tolerance than this.” Whit began the prelaunch sequence for a Budweiser bottle, his hands resting against the brown glass. “T minus five, four, three, two, one, ignition and liftoff.
-
The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre: A Novel
By Dominic SmithThe debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos reimagines the life of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of photography, who becomes convinced that the world is going to end when his mind unravels ...
-
Nat Tate: An American Artist: 1928-1960
By William BoydLittle did they know that the painter Nat Tate, a depressive genius who burned almost all his output before his suicide, never existed. The book was a hoax, and the art world had fallen for it.
-
Forty Rooms
By Olga GrushinWas it a life well lived? A life complete? Does such a life really exist? This ambiguity is the core of this provocative novel.
-
See What I Have Done: A Novel
By Sarah SchmidtIn this riveting debut novel, Sarah Schmidt reimagines the day of the infamous murders as an intimate story of a family devoid of love.
-
Sourdough: A Novel
By Robin SloanNamed One of the Best Books of the Year by NPR, the San Francisco Chronicle, and Southern Living Lois Clary is a software engineer at General Dexterity, a San Francisco robotics company with world-changing ambitions.
-
Summary of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith | Includes Analysis
By Instaread SummariesSummary of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith | Includes Analysis