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'This 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.' (Publication summary)
Publication Details of Only Known VersionEarliest 2 Known Versions of
Other Formats
- Large print.
- Sound recording.
Works about this Work
-
Keyvan Allahyari and Dominic Smith in Conversation
Keyvan Allahyari
(interviewer),
2017
single work
interview
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 31 no. 1 2017; (p. 151-157)'The novel is peopled by artists, art dealers, critics, patrons of art, forgers, and curators. For this novel, there were three essential "informants": Stephen Gritt, the head of restoration at the National Gallery of Canada; Frima Fox Hofrichter, an art historian who specializes in Judith Leyster and women painters of the seventeenth century; and Ken Perenyi, a master forger who wrote a fascinating memoir called Caveat Emptor. [...]I think the opposite-that Australians understand they are playing on the world stage, and often at the top tier, across all the artistic fields. [...]the moral forgery at the center of the book is much more interesting to me dramatically, as a fiction writer-and it's also the bigger moral failure, in my view.' (Publication abstract)
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Truth and Fakery in a Work of Fine Art
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Advertiser , 9 July 2016; (p. 36)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel -
Gaps and Silences
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 382 2016; (p. 24)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel -
The Last Painting of Sara de Vos Review: Dominic Smith's Brilliant Art Novel
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Brisbane Times , 2 June 2016;
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel 'The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is the fourth novel by Dominic Smith, an Australian living in Texas. The plot is so rich that the description of it could sound too dense, but Smith weaves his tale with a light touch. The book centres on the influence of a painting on three people across centuries: mid-17th century Amsterdam, the time of the Dutch masters; New York in the 1950s; and Sydney at the turn of this century.' -
A Picture of Art and Its Sense of Mystery
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 4-5 June 2016; (p. 26) The Age , 4-5 June 2016; (p. 26)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel
-
Dutch Courage
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Courier-Mail , 30 April 2016; (p. 36)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel 'A novel links a 17th-century painting with three lives on three continents over three centuries I had the realisation that there was this missing layer of the Dutch Golden Age of painting …' -
Dominic Smith, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Saturday Paper , 21 May 2016;
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel -
Tender Portrait of Loss Spans the Centuries
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 28-29 May 2016; (p. 20)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel -
A Picture of Art and Its Sense of Mystery
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 4-5 June 2016; (p. 26) The Age , 4-5 June 2016; (p. 26)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel -
Gaps and Silences
2016
single work
review
— Appears in: Australian Book Review , June-July no. 382 2016; (p. 24)
— Review of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos 2016 single work novel -
A Pair of Ragged Claws
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: The Weekend Australian , 27-28 February 2016; (p. 17) -
Dominic Smith
Caroline Baum
(interviewer),
2016
single work
interview
— Appears in: The Sydney Morning Herald , 21-22 May 2016; (p. 22) The Saturday Age , 21-22 May 2016; (p. 24) -
Keyvan Allahyari and Dominic Smith in Conversation
Keyvan Allahyari
(interviewer),
2017
single work
interview
— Appears in: Antipodes , June vol. 31 no. 1 2017; (p. 151-157)'The novel is peopled by artists, art dealers, critics, patrons of art, forgers, and curators. For this novel, there were three essential "informants": Stephen Gritt, the head of restoration at the National Gallery of Canada; Frima Fox Hofrichter, an art historian who specializes in Judith Leyster and women painters of the seventeenth century; and Ken Perenyi, a master forger who wrote a fascinating memoir called Caveat Emptor. [...]I think the opposite-that Australians understand they are playing on the world stage, and often at the top tier, across all the artistic fields. [...]the moral forgery at the center of the book is much more interesting to me dramatically, as a fiction writer-and it's also the bigger moral failure, in my view.' (Publication abstract)
-
form
y
The Book Club [May 2016]
Sydney
:
Australian Broadcasting Corporation
,
2016
15259467
2016
film/TV
Host Jennifer Byrne joins regular panelists Marieke Hardy and Jason Steger, and guests Jeanette Winterson and Virginia Gay to discuss and review the classic book Wuthering Heights and Australian novel, The Last Painting of Sara De Vos by Dominic Smith.
-
What I’m Reading—Heather Rose
2016
single work
column
— Appears in: Meanjin Online 2016;
Awards
- 2017 winner Australian Book Industry Awards (ABIA) — Australian Literary Fiction Book of the Year
- 2017 longlisted The Walter Scott Prize for Historical Fiction
- 2017 winner Indie Awards — Fiction
- Holland,
-
New York (City),
New York (State),
cUnited States of America (USA),cAmericas,
- 1631
- 1950s