About this item
A masterful new story charts the circuitous course of the sole surviving work of a female Dutch painterThis is what we long for: the 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. In his earlier, award-winning novels, Dominic Smith demonstrated a gift for coaxing the past to life. Now, in "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, " he 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, " which hangs over the bed of a wealthy descendant of the original owner. An Australian grad student, Ellie Shipley, struggling to stay afloat in New York, agrees to paint a forgery of the landscape, 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. As the three threads intersect, "The Last Painting of Sara de Vos" mesmerizes while it grapples with the demands of the artistic life, showing how the deceits of the past can forge the present. This program includes a Reading Group Guide read by the author.
About the Author
Dominic Smith is the author of five novels, including The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, a New York Times Bestseller and a New York Times Editors' Choice. Sold into more than a dozen countries, the novel was also a "Best Book of the Year" selection by Amazon, Kirkus Reviews, Slate and the San Francisco Chronicle. In the US it was long-listed for the Carnegie Medal for Excellence from the American Library Association and in the UK for the Walter Scott Historical Fiction Prize. In Australia, it was chosen as the Fiction Indie Book of the Year by the Association of Independent Booksellers and the Literary Book of the Year as part of the Australian Book Industry Awards.Dominic's other novels are The Electric Hotel, Bright and Distant Shores, The Beautiful Miscellaneous, and The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Texas Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, The Paris Review, The Australian, and The New York Times. Dominic grew up in Sydney, Australia and now lives in Seattle, Washington.Learn more at www.dominicsmith.net
