The Last Painting of Sara De Vos

The unnamed narrator rehashes the events surrounding the theft of At the Edge of a Wood. Martijn “Marty” and Rachel de Groot, rich society patrons who live in a fabulous Fifth Avenue apartment, throw an annual fundraiser dinner for orphans at their home. Rachel, a depressive who has suffered several miscarriages, frets about the event. For the 1957 fundraiser, she decides to add a special touch: She uses a company called Rent-a-Beats, which provides colorful, artsy types to mingle with guests at classy parties. Marty also gets nervous about the party since Clay White, the managing partner from the law firm where Marty practices patent law, will attend with his wife.

The de Groots’ apartment is one of six in a building the de Groot family has owned since the 1920s. The atmosphere in the three-level apartment is appropriately glum for the benefit because the walls are covered with the dark-hued Dutch and Flemish paintings that are part of Marty’s wealth. When the party starts, the guests are envious and complimentary of the apartment, which borders on Central Park. Marty launches into an odd toast to Laika the dog, who is at that very moment being launched into space aboard Sputnik 2.

The party unravels, however, after one of the Rent-a-Beats gets high and insults the guests using vulgar language about their wealth. He claims to be a communist—a shocking admission given it is the height of the Cold War and the Russians at are winning because they’ve launched Sputnik 2. Marty’s boss strongarms the Rent-a-Beats out of the party, embarrassing Marty.

At this point, the thieves have stolen the painting and replaced it with a forgery. Later, Marty sees the painting is a little crooked on the wall but has no idea the original is gone. He leaves this detail out when he tells the story of the theft of the painting at future parties; Marty is a little relieved when he realizes the painting is gone when the theft finally becomes obvious: The de Groot family owned the painting for hundreds of years, and each owner of the painting died before the age of 60. Rachel’s depression lifts after the painting is gone. Maybe the painting is cursed, and its theft was a stroke of luck.

Sara de Vos—who has the distinction of being a woman painter admitted to the art Guild of St. Luke in Amsterdam—remembers the day her daughter Kathrijn contracted the fatal plague. It is spring when a great whale washes up on the shore of Berckhey, a seaside town not far from Amsterdam. Scientists, artists, and even the tax authority gather to observe, paint, measure, and watch the animal’s death.

Barent, Sara’s husband, decides to paint a portrait of the whale, hoping he can sell it for some profit. Sara is a painter in her own right (mostly of still life paintings) but serves as an assistant to her husband when he paints; she agrees to accompany him the day he goes to make his studies of the dying whale. To Sara’s surprise, Kathrijn—a very timid seven-year-old subject to night terrors and wetting her bed—asks to go to see the real-life monster. Thinking that seeing the whale might help her daughter face her fears, Sara agrees she may go.

The family spends the day at the seaside. Barent paints while Sara grinds pigments for him. Kathrijn plays along the shore and (ominously), makes a little bier that looks like it would be perfect for a funeral pyre.

On the way back to Amsterdam, the family stops to trade for lunch. Kathrijn, emboldened by her day at the sea, takes the lead in trading with the people running the stand. The adults think it endearing that Kathrijn and the owners’ little boy are handling the transaction, but Sara later remembers that the little boy had yellow eyes and looked a little sickly. They return home, where four days later, Kathrijn dies.

Barent copes by completing the painting of the whale. The colors he chooses are so dark and mournful that no one will purchase the painting. Sara grieves by stopping her painting. When she finally paints again, what she produces is At the Edge of a Wood.

Eleanor “Ellie” Shipley, an Australian doctoral student in art history at Columbia University, struggles to finish her dissertation and takes lucrative art restoration projects on the side. Gabriel Lodge approaches her with a commission to make a copy of At the Edge of a Wood. While Gabriel initially tells Ellie the copy is for the owner, it is obvious from early in the process that what Ellie is doing is a forgery. Though she initially has some qualms, Ellie—in spite of herself—finds herself absorbed in the technical aspects of the forgery. Working from photos of the painting (from which she removes a tell-tale portion that includes the de Groots’ bed), Ellie recreates At the Edge of a Wood. No one other than Gabriel knows about her forgery, although Maurice—the Frenchman from whom she buys her antique frame—instantly knows something is off when Ellie shows him the photos of the painting but refuses to name the owner. Ellie is troubled by some of the coloring in the clothing of figures from the painting. In the end, she uses synthetic paints and sand to produce the effect.

At this point, Ellie doesn’t need the money from the forgery because she saved every penny of the money she receives for doing restorations. Ellie’s early life motivates her; she grew up in a lower-middle class household in Australia. Her parents had two girls but mourned the death of a little boy that came before the girls. Once in school, Ellie understood that even there that she was relegated to second-best because she was a girl. Ellie, however, was gifted. She won her school’s art prize and blossomed under the tutelage of her art teacher, Father Barry. Despite being from Australia, Ellie channeled the style and moods of the European masters she later studied in high school. Ellie identifies with other forgers through history; they, too, were ignored and underappreciated.

When Gabriel brings the authentic At the Edge of a Wood to her house to store it, Ellie “carries it into her bedroom and props it against her dresser. She watches it for hours, until she falls asleep, mesmerized by the girl at dusk” (40). 

One year after Kathrijn’s death, the de Vos family is in deep financial trouble. Barent’s painting of the whale did not sell so he began selling hastily created, unsigned landscapes to taverns and private owners. Doing so was a violation of guild rules—a powerful force in Amsterdam—so both Barent and Sara were fined and suspended from the guild. With the fines hanging over them and no way to legitimately sell paintings, the de Vos painters can neither make much money nor attract paying art students. Barent starts working at a bookbindery and lights on one scheme after another to make money. His current scheme is to sell paintings of tulips to nouveau riche Amsterdam businesspeople making fortunes due to the Dutch craze for tulips.

Sara is supposed to be creating paintings of tulips, but instead works on what will become At the Edge of a Wood. She lies when Barent asks about her progress. She feels increasingly alienated from him as he obsesses about paying off their debts, which are listed in a big ledger to which only he has access. Sara’s work on these cheap and fast paintings will be anonymous since the works must be unsigned. She doesn’t much care about this, however, as she knows the people who will be buying them see art as a status symbol or a commodity.

Marty finally makes partner at his law firm. After a celebratory lunch during which Clay and the partners share the news and give him fancy gifts, Marty wanders into the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he is a patron. One of Marty’s old habits is to go sit in a gallery until his mundane thoughts flee and he is able to feel authentic emotion. He does that on this day, and what arises as he looks at the breasts of a woman in a Gauguin painting is lust.

Marty calls Gretchen, his secretary, to share the news of his partnership. She already knows. He invites her to celebrate with him with a drink since he has the rest of the day off. She says yes, and they arrange to meet later in a tavern in bohemian Greenwich Village, close to where she lives. Even as he makes the call and Gretchen says yes, Marty knows he is verging on infidelity and that Gretchen knows this as well. Marty also phones Rachel to tell her a made-up story about a late dinner out with some friends. She has been in better spirits lately, so he feels only slightly guilty about the lie.

At the tavern, Marty and Gretchen drink against a background of a jazz music. They leave just before a bar fight breaks out and head to Gretchen’s apartment, which is decorated in appropriately bohemian style. Marty’s lust disappears as he sees pictures of Gretchen and her Michigan family and listens to her stories about growing up in the Midwest. The possibility of a sexual liaison completely dissolves when Marty tells Gretchen about Rachel’s miscarriages and she tells him how sorry she is to hear about the de Groots’ fertility problems. Marty feels guilt over the almost-infidelity as he leaves for home and buys gardenias for Rachel.

When Marty gets home, Rachel is asleep in the bedroom, where At the Edge of a Wood hangs over the bed. Marty realizes that something is amiss about the painting. For years, he has noticed the steady oxidation of the copper nails on the frame on the painting. When he looks at the painting that night, however, there aren’t any nails. It is suddenly clear that the painting is a fake.

Ellie is now 60 and an established art historian teaching at the University of Sydney and has recently published a book on Dutch women painters of the 17th century. In the years since the forgery, Ellie married, divorced, lived in London, and came back to Australia. She lives in a beautiful house on isolated Scotland Island. She is a settled, if lonely, woman who has spent the years since the forgery going the straight and narrow.

Her carefully constructed life begins unravelling one afternoon when she receives a call about one of the paintings for an exhibit she is curating for the New South Wales Museum. Max Culkins, the museum curator, tells her he has great news: Marty de Groot has agreed to loan the museum At the Edge of a Wood for the exhibit. He will be bringing the painting himself. At the Edge of a Wood has an interesting backstory. After the thieves stole the painting, Marty offered a $75,000 reward for its return. He did get the painting back, and Ellie has assumed for all these years that the forgery was destroyed or put in storage. She knows that Gabriel Lodge had both paintings up until the end of 1958, but she is not sure of how he got the painting back to Marty.

The problem for Ellie is that another At the Edge of a Wood is en route to Sydney from a Dutch museum, along with another supposed Sara de Vos painting—Winter with a Child’s Funeral Procession (1637). Caught off guard by the phone call, Ellie initially says nothing to Max about the two paintings. After nights spent imagining her arrest and humiliation once the forgery is exposed, she contacts Max to let him know that there are two paintings. He already knows this and says the several staff members are aware of it as well. He promises to take care of the issue when he gets back from a trip to China and tells Ellie to tell no one about the issue.

Ellie is on hand and nervous on the day the first At the Edge of a Wood arrives at the museum. Hendrik, the courier from the Dutch museum, must take care of paperwork the next day for proof of delivery, so she takes him to the hotel where he will stay. During the trip to the hotel, Hendrik talks about the second de Vos, dated and signed by Sara. When Ellie challenges him on the authenticity of the second de Vos, he refuses to back down, even though she has the PhD and he is just a courier. The next day, the packers, several art historians, and Ellie are there when the second de Vos is unpacked.