The Last Painting of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

by Dominic Smith

A profound pleasure of being swept into vivid new worlds, worlds peopled by characters so intriguing and real that we can't shake them, even long after the reading's done. Dominic Smith deftly bridges the historical and the contemporary, tracking a collision course between a rare landscape by a female Dutch painter of the golden age, an inheritor of the work in 1950s Manhattan, and a celebrated art historian who painted a forgery of it in her youth. 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. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, agrees to paint a forgery, 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.

Reviewed by dpfaef on

4 of 5 stars

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I don't know what I was expecting when I picked up this book, I thought that maybe Sara de Vos was a real person, now I know she is a composite of Dutch women painters from the 1600's - silly me! This was an absolutely charming story, rather bittersweet.

Dominic Smith has with a mixture of history and deft storytelling woven the lives of three people into a wonderful story of love, loss and redemption. I enjoyed Edoardo Ballerini reading of this book, I felt he was perfect.

This review was originally posted on The Pfaeffle Journal

Last modified on

Reading updates

  • Started reading
  • 6 September, 2016: Finished reading
  • 6 September, 2016: Reviewed