The Last Painting Of Sara de Vos by Dominic Smith

The other day my son remarked that I had not posted anything here in a while. This was the right remark at the right time as I'd been meaning to add a book post before 2020 finally wandered off. Not that any of us will miss it but it did have some highlights along with the low light. 2020 election results and the arrival of vaccines at the tail end, all four of us together under one roof and the absence of daily commute are a few of the favorite things of last year. I'll note down just one of the few books I managed to finish in this very busy year.

When a book is being read on Kindle, it is not lying face down where you left off, inviting you in on your return. To add to this, past and present lives of two major characters from two different centuries got intermingled enough for me to get lost and leave. That is, until I took it up again when it showed up in my Kindle library as 57% read. 

The key that holds this book came to me on this second attempt. Each chapter is a beautiful painting by Dominic Smith and each word a masterful brush stroke. Every sentence, part of a scene coming together to create that fully framed painting. 

 Dominic Smith created Sara de Vos out of the life stories of many women painters of 17th century that he had gleaned from research. It was so real that as soon as I finished the book, I started searching for Sara de Vos's painting 'At The Edge of The Wood'. I was frustrated that links for the book kept coming up instead of links to the painting. This is how I found that there was no such artist or painting! Apparently this painting provided some inspiration to the author.

The second protagonist in the story is also a woman painter living in New York in the 20th century. Eleanor Shipley restored paintings in the early phase of her career and the one mistake she did was to do a forgery of the single known painting of Sara de Vos. 

Through Dominic Smith, it dawns on us how skilled one needs to be to do a forgery. I had never thought of this angle before so this was very revealing. To faithfully represent the original painter and to pass through many inspections,  a forger has to have in depth knowledge of old paintings and the tools used to create them in those times. Same skills used by a restorer of paintings. Same difference between hacking and cyber security if you ask me. 

Dominic Smith is a painter of words and writes as if he has a scene right in front of his eyes. You don't want to miss any of the words because then you could very well be missing that little hint of sunshine or the shadow from a tree that gives depth to this masterpiece of a book. If you love paintings, then this is your book without doubt.