Reviews - The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

464 reviews for:

The Last Painting of Sara de Vos

Dominic Smith

3.79 AVERAGE

steph_t's review against another edition

4.0

A nice, light indulgent read. It was a bit predictable but I didn't mind :).
The authors use of descriptive language is gorgeous in this book, I could picture the paintings in their entirety.

alice2000's review against another edition

3.0

Casey's Challenge 2017: #22 Own but haven't read

jonid's review against another edition

4.0

Three alternating narrators: Sara de Vos, in 1631 Amsterdam - the first woman admitted as a master painter into the city's guild, married to an overextended painter; Marty de Groot in 1957 New York City, a wealthy lawyer who discovers that one of the paintings that make up his inherited wealth has been replaced with a forgery, and Ellie Shipley in Sydney Australia in 2000, now a well known and respected art historian and curator. Woven well and at a steady pace, the stories of the artist of An Edge of Wood, the owner and the forger come together and intersect in a carefully constructed story. The author shares the different perspective without over wrought emotion or sentiment, leaving the reader to figure out for themselves if the character is sympathetic or not. Each one makes a transition as events shape them and their response shapes them even more so. A satisfying read and a smart book.

itsaintmess's review against another edition

4.75

adventurous mysterious medium-paced

Plot or Character Driven: A mix

Strong character development: Yes

Loveable characters: Yes

Diverse cast of characters: No

Flaws of characters a main focus: Yes

the last painting of sara de vos by dominic smith just like the goldfinch is built around a dutch painting. it’s set in three different timelines. 1600s, sara de vos begins working on a winter landscape featuring a girl after some awful event happening to her family. 1950s, the painting is in the private collection, and ellie, an art restoration expert, accepts a commission to paint a forgery of it, having no idea what consequences it will have on her entire life. 2000s, ellie curates an exhibition on 17th century dutch women painters, and there’re two identical looking paintings on the way to the art gallery — the real one and the forgery she painted years ago which she’ll have to face.

i stumbled upon this book by pure chance and after reading the blurb decided it might have some similarities with the goldfinch. it kinda does. it focuses on art and art forgery, on regret and grief. the writing is beautiful but sometimes fells like it’s trying too hard. it’s really descriptive tho and enjoyable, i’ll include some of the quotes below.

“novelists have this same problem, she thinks, dickens and austen and everyone since: how to get people in and out of rooms, up and out of chairs. that problem doesn’t exist for painters.”

“when i was a kid, to escape the household, i used to read in the bathtub for hours. the year i turned eleven took place with me and the brontë sisters half-submerged. the pages would get as wilted as my pruned fingers and toes. all the great scenes from literature are watery in my mind—and they play out to the underwater sound of my own heartbeat.”

i’m not a big fan of switching povs but i liked how it’s executed here with the narration going back and forth in time. it keeps the chapters not too long and the story well-paced. there’re three narrators — the painter, the forgerer and the owner of the painting that gets switched to the copy and he tries to get the original one back. they’re interesting, feel alive, their voices are very distinct and there’s some actual characters development happening. the book is easy to get into with an intriguing opening line “the painting is stolen the same week the russians put a dog into space” and hard to put down.

it’s well-researched and perfectly plotted. i got a lot of enjoyment out of reading it and seeing all the threads come together in the end. besides it’s always nice to learn something new about art. the character of sara de vos is based on the actual painter, the first woman to be admitted to the haarlem guild of st. luke, sarah van baalbergen. none of her work has survived. not a lot of women were members of the guilds during the 17th century and some of the works they produced were attributed to male painters.

if you like a good plot and reading about art this book is for you.

knitter22's review

5.0

I don't search out books about art or lost paintings; I rarely read historical fiction, and books that jump back and forth in time often leave me wishing for some nice linear storytelling, but The Last Painting of Sara de Vos surprised and enthralled me. Dominic Smith has combined three original story lines set in 17th-century Holland, New York in the 1950s, and Sydney in 2000, all revolving around At the Edge of a Wood, a fictional painting by Sara de Vos. Smith opens the book with a vividly beautiful description of the painting to set the stage.

A winter scene at twilight. The girl stands in the foreground against a silver birch, a pale hand pressed to its bark, staring out at the skaters on the frozen river. There are half a dozen of them, bundled against the cold, flecks of brown and yellow cloth floating above the ice. A brindled dog trots beside a boy as he arcs into a wide turn. One mitten in the air, he’s beckoning to the girl, to us. Up along the riverbank, a village is drowsy with smoke and firelight, flush against the bell of the pewter sky. A single cataract of daylight at the horizon, a meadow dazzled beneath a rent in the clouds, then the revelation of her bare feet in the snow. A raven – quilled in violet and faintly iridescent – caws from a branch beside her. In one hand she holds a frayed black ribbon, twined between slender fingers, and the hem of her dress, visible beneath a long gray shawl, is torn. The girl’s face is mostly in profile, her dark hair loose and tangled about her shoulders. Her eyes are fixed on some distant point – but is it dread or the strange halo of winter twilight that pins her in place? She seems unable, or unwilling, to reach the frozen riverbank. Her footprints lead back through the snow, toward the wood, beyond the frame. Somehow, she’s walked into this scene from outside the painting, trudged onto the canvas from our world, not hers.

The author provides the reader with wonderful details about life in 1637, painting, and the Guild of St. Luke in Holland when telling Sara de Vos' story, and we learn elucidating details about how art forgers carry out their work during Eleanor Shipley's chapters. These storylines come together perfectly with that of the painting's owner, Marty de Groot. The Last Painting of Sara de Vos changed these three lives over centuries, and I'm fairly sure that the story of how it did this may be one of the best I read this year.