Not quite the art heist book I thought it’d be, but something quieter and wonderful

This year I’m discovering that crime in the art world is basically catnip to me. I already raved about Unbecoming earlier this year and I’m about to rave about The Last Painting of Sara de Vos. Both books deftly hop from different narrative viewpoints in time, but The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is much more contemplative and less sinister in tone. This book is less about crime than it is about humans making mistakes and then doing the best they can to live with them.

Fictional artist Sara de Vos lived in the 1600s and was the first woman admitted as a master painter to the Guild of St. Luke’s in Holland. She painted mostly still lifes, but her last known painting is of a mysterious woman in a haunting winter scene called At the Edge of a Wood. In 1950s New York, a young grad student named Ellie Shipley studies female Dutch painters and gets roped into creating a forgery of At the Edge of a Wood. Flash forward to present day where Ellie is curating an exhibit of female Dutch painters and both the real and forged copy of the painting are due to arrive.

Dominic Smith is a talented writer who moves seamlessly from viewpoint to viewpoint. He’s written a novel that kept me engaged and interested in all of the characters throughout the whole book. Not the easiest thing to do with so many moving parts! These characters felt like real people making understandable mistakes with believable motivations. Smith has a quiet intensity about his writing that made this book feel introspective.