The Last Painting of Sara de Vos: A Novel [Paperback]

Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the citys 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 lawyers 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 originalAt the Edge of a Woodand her forgery are en route to her museum, the life she has carefully constructed threatens to unravel entirely and irrevocably.

An elegant page-turner. The New York Times Book Review

Lustrous . . . skillful plotting and effortless prose . . . meticulously documents not only artists products but also their tools and labor. Chicago Tribune

The genius of Smiths 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 paintings rippling impact on three people over multiple centuries and locations. Ian Shapira,Washington Post

Gorgeous storytelling: wry, playful, and utterly alive. The Boston Globe

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