The Last Painting Of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith

 

Amsterdam, 1631.  New York, 1957.  Sydney, 2000.  At first glance, there is nothing to tie such disparate locations and dates together.  But Dominic Smith ties them together gloriously with the story of a painting.  Sara De Vos is an artist in Amsterdam, one of the few female artists, who are normally restricted to painting still lives of fruit and flowers.  But when her daughter, seven, dies in one of the fevers that periodically sweep the land, she branches out and paints a picture that is set outside in winter and that expresses her grief and sorrow.

In New York, Ellie Shipley is finishing up her doctorate, although it isn't going well.  She had thought she would be a restoration artist but decided that the academic side of art was more to her liking.  She is approached by a man who occasionally uses Ellie for restoration work.  He has come by Sara De Vos' painting which has been in the same family for hundreds of years and wants Ellie to make a reproduction.  She does so and then falls in love with Jake, who is in actually Marty who was the owner of the work and who has tracked her down.

Years later in Sydney, Ellie is about to retire.  She has been a professor for years, her work based on her expertise on the work of Sara De Vos and other Dutch women artists.  The museum that partners with her university is doing an exhibition of these women artists and Ellie is prominent in the event.  When two paintings done by Sara De Vos and both of the same scene are loaned to the exhibition, Ellie knows that she is about to be exposed as Marty is bringing one of the paintings.  

This is a gorgeous book.  I've had it for several years and remember all the praise it garnered when it was released.  Usually, a book with so many characters spread across so many years and locations is difficult to follow but this one seems organic in its ability to draw the reader in as we go from place to place.  Dominic Smith is an Australian by birth and this novel was a New York Times Editor's Choice.  The suspense and the beauty portrayed in the picture, the grief and secrecy that always surrounded it, all work together to propel the work forward.  This book is recommended for literary fiction readers.