The genius of Smith’s book is not just the caper plot but also the interweaving of three alternating timelines and locations to tell a wider, suspenseful story of one painting’s rippling impact on three people over multiple centuries and locations...Smith clearly immersed himself in the world of Dutch masters and the subculture of forgers, too. His descriptions are beautifully precise and reveal the vast research required to write so originally in the well-trodden genre of art mystery.
Written in prose so clear that we absorb its images as if by mind meld, The Last Painting is gorgeous storytelling: wry, playful, and utterly alive, with an almost tactile awareness of the emotional contours of the human heart. Vividly detailed, acutely sensitive to stratifications of gender and class, it’s fiction that keeps you up at night — first because you’re barreling through the book, then because you’ve slowed your pace to a crawl, savoring the suspense.
Smith’s writing is incandescent from the first sentence: 'The painting is stolen the same week the Russians put a dog into space.' With a virtuoso sense of place, he pulls you into very different worlds: 17th century Holland, ravaged by plague and freezing cold; the luxe life of a modern Manhattan lawyer; the stupendously dire apartment of an artist struggling to stay afloat and become the person she knows she can be; and the modern art world of 2000, where careers can be made or lost with just a brush stroke. But more than that, Smith plunges us into the world of the art forger with precision and startling beauty.
It's a testament to Smith's skillful plotting and effortless prose that the novel's intricate form emerges only in retrospect...Though the characters' realizations about their motives are at times belabored, the shifting perspectives of The Last Painting keep epiphanies from feeling too neat. Both melancholy and defiant, Smith's novel leaves us with the sense that the truths we make are no less valuable for being inexact.
As his previous three novels (The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre, The Beautiful Miscellaneous and Bright and Distant Shores) demonstrate, he can craft an elegant page-turner that carries its erudition effortlessly on an energetic plot. His narratives may be complex, but that quality only enhances their suspense...The Last Painting of Sara de Vos may begin as a mystery about a crime, but by the end the reader sees far beneath that surface: All along it was a mystery of the heart.
Dominic Smith's novel about the eerie powers of art and the long reach of the past is every bit as harrowing in its own subtle way as its more physical counterpart...absolutely transporting...
Smith excels at offering insight into his reserved characters’ psyches through subtle details and masterfully juggles time and place, as well as the various machinations, with dexterity and a lyrical touch for description. There’s a lovely, genteel beauty here. As with Vermeer’s still lifes, the novel has a serene quality that belies its tension and intrigue.
Marty and Ellie’s subsequent entanglement—interwoven with vivid glimpses into the life of the enigmatic Dutchwoman whose work gives The Last Painting of Sara de Vos its muse—is the narrative’s heart. And if the book’s more current segments don’t resonate quite as fully as the ones set earlier, it mostly feels like a testament to Smith’s singular gift for conjuring distant histories. In his hands, the damp cobblestones and canals of 1600s Holland and the shabby gentility of Eisenhower-era New York feel as real and tactile and tinged with magic as de Vos’ indelible brushstrokes.
Laced with subtle tension and emotion, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is exquisitely human, highlighting characters who are endearing even at their worst. Smith’s novel illustrates why art remains a powerful force, both for those who create it and those who view it.
