The Last Painting of Sara De Vos

In Part 1, thieves steal At the Edge of a Wood—assumed to be the only surviving work of 17th-century painter Sara de Vos—from the apartment of Martijn “Marty” de Groot during a fundraiser for orphans. Marty does not discover the theft until months later because the thieves replace the original painting with a forgery created by Eleanor “Ellie” Shipley, an Australian doctoral student studying art history at Columbia University.

Smith tells the story of how Sara came to create the painting and how Ellie creates the forgery. Back in the 17th century, Sara’s daughter dies of the plague. The girl’s death leads to financial ruin for the family. Barent de Vos, Sara’s husband, cannot sell the depressing painting he works on after the little girl’s death, and Sara secretly works on At the Edge of a Wood to work through her own grief.

Centuries later, Ellie is a young woman who feels like an outsider in the academic art world of the 1950s. She creates the de Vos forgery both because she feels a kinship with Sara as a woman, but also because she feels anger at the way her sex impedes her desire to be an artist.

With an inciting incident, Smith brings the story forward to 2000. By some strange twist, At the Edge of a Wood and the forgery of the painting are both headed to an art exhibition on which Ellie is working in Sydney. If discovered, the revelation of the forgery has the capacity to destroy Ellie’s career. The person bringing the painting is Marty de Groot, the original owner and Ellie’s former lover. She is sure he means to unmask her as a forger.

In Part 2, the plot expands to cover what happens after the creation of the painting in 1637, the creation of the forgery in 1958, and the appearance of two At the Edge of the World paintings in 2000.

Barent and Sara are virtually bankrupted when the guild controlling the sale of art fines them when they discover the de Voses are selling cheap and unsigned works of art without the guild’s permission. Barent abandons Sara, who is forced to move to Heemstede to work in the home of a landowner holding some of the debt. At the Edge of a Wood ends up in the hands of Pieter de Groot, Marty’s ancestor, who buys the painting at an auction of the de Vos household goods.

In Heemstede, Sara meets and settles down with Tomas. Sara creates both A Child’s Funeral Procession to honor the people killed by plague in Heemstede, and one more painting—a self-portrait she completes at the end of her life. She dies of an infection after falling through some ice. Her paintings are among those her employer passes on to his heirs, and the self-portrait eventually ends up in the hands of a modern-day descendent.

In the 1950s, Ellie becomes so obsessed with Sara in the aftermath of creating the forgery that she decides to write her dissertation on Sara, despite warnings that no one is interested in female painters. Unfortunately for Ellie, Marty discovers she is the one who painted the forgery. In 1958, Marty assumes a false identity to investigate Ellie. In the end, he seduces her and leaves the forgery in her apartment. After this, Ellie flees New, completes her dissertation, and embarks on her career as an art historian on the strength of her work on Sara’s supposedly sole painting.

In 2000, Ellie is at a high point in her career with the upcoming publication of a book on female painters of the Dutch Golden Age and a museum show to curate on the same topic. Although she fears Marty means to ruin her life by revealing the forgery, he comes to Sydney to ask her forgiveness for the seduction and deceit. He uses his money to acquire the forgery of At the Edge of a Wood and gives Ellie permission to destroy it. Freed from the possibility of discovery, Ellie can move on with her life. The first act of her new life is the discovery of Sara’s self-portrait. The novel ends with Ellie embarking on new academic work based on her discoveries.