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µ˙The Museum of Fine Arts, HoustonMFAH Book Club

The Last Painting of Sara de Vosa novel by Dominic Smith

“Across three continents and four hundred years, Dominic Smith has spun a stunning tale of forgeries and deaths, deception and love, to reveal the lasting legacy of a fateful brushstroke. Akin to the page-turning greats like Girl with a Pearl Earring and The Goldfinch, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is held together by the gravitas of a single painting to tell the story of two women—their mistakes and love affairs, their devotion to art, and their struggles to thrive in a male dominated profession. When Ellie Shipley, a young art student, agrees to copy the seventeenth-century painting At the Edge of a Wood, her future becomes irrevocably entangled with Sara de Vos, the artist whose work she forged. Weaving together the past and present lives of Sara and Ellie and their two paintings, Smith brilliantly transports readers from 1950s New York—the mahogany walls of Upper West Side apartments

and the grit of Brooklyn, to the moody Dutch countryside of the 1600s, to Sydney, Australia’s sun-soaked harbor in 2000. A vivid, enthralling novel that is as timeless and luminous as the painting itself.”

—Al Woodworth, Amazon.com Review

How to Use This Discussion Guide

All art, whether literary or visual, arises from the context of its time. Creating bridges between the literary and visual arts is what makes the MFAH Book Club unique.

This discussion guide features questions about broad themes, including duality, authenticity, and the commodification of art—all addressed in Dominic Smith’s The Last Painting of Sara de Vos—as well as questions about works of art in the Museum’s collections and exhibitions.

Read the book, discuss some or all of the questions with your group, and then reserve an MFAH Book Club tour online.

How to Book an MFAH Book Club Tour

For book clubs and other groups of six or more confirmed participants, tours related to Smith’s The Last Painting of Sara de Vos are available on select days and times June 1–September 30, 2017. Tours are led by Museum docents and feature excerpts from the book to drive discussion about works on view at the Museum.

For more information, visit mfah.org/bookclub. Please e-mail bookclub@mfah.org with any questions.

SUMMER2017

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The Business of Art

During the Dutch Golden Age, trade was the prime instigator of the era’s prosperity. Paintings of this period reflect the diversity of the trade relationships made throughout the 17th century, often with particular attention paid to exotic foods and other material imports. In the book, both Sara de Vos and her husband, Barent, were members of the Guild of St. Luke, which operated as a governing body regulating the buying and selling of artworks in Amsterdam.

Consider the two auction scenes illustrated in the book; the first when Pieter de Groot acquires Sara de Vos’s work At the Edge of the Wood in 1637 Amsterdam (p. 138), and the second being Marty and Ellie’s endeavor at the Old Masters auction at Thornton Morrell in 1958 Manhattan (p. 152). Compare and contrast the experiences of the three respective buyers. Identify the similarities and differences in the buying processes from the two eras. What are the considerations and motivations behind each purchase?

“ Let me tell you something . . . it’s oil and

pigment on scraps of linen or hide and

sunlight passing through prisms of color.

What we’re trying to buy when we buy art, is

ourselves. So if you ask me, part of you was

stolen with that painting and you should feel

outraged.” (Frederic Kriel, a Swiss-German

auctioneer, sales director of European art

for Sotheby’s, p. 129)

What do you think Frederic means when he says to Marty we are “buying ourselves” when we buy art?

“ There are people who look at art, people

who buy it, and people who make it. I’m in a

whole separate category—I mend it, bring it

back to life. It’s not unusual for conservators

to spend more hours alone with a great work

than the artist themselves.” (Ellie, p. 192)

Jan van Huysum, Still Life of Flowers and Fruit, 1715, oil on wood, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Alice Pratt Brown Museum Fund and the Brown Foundation Accessions Endowment Fund, 98.80.

Consider the roles of the four types of people Ellie outlines above. Discuss the differences in the ways each of these individuals experience art. What category do you fall under? Imagine being charged now with conserving a work of art like the still life shown above. Does it change the way you consider the work? What new questions arise for you as you embody this new role?

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Between Two Worlds

“ Here was a winter landscape with the glaucous

atmosphere of an Avercamp, the delicate grays

and blues and russets, the peasants skating

through the ether of twilight above the ice, but

with this stark and forlorn figure sanding at the

tree. She was the onlooker but also the focal

point, the center of gravity. This was no village

frolic before the onrush of night – a common

Avercamp motif – this was a moment of sus-

pension, a girl trapped by the eternity of dusk.”

(Ellie on At the Edge of the Wood, p. 31)

In the passage above, Ellie describes the scene from Sara de Vos’s landscape painting At the Edge of the Wood. In her description she also suggests the painting projects a sense of duality, of being trapped between two worlds. How could this idea be applied to Ellie’s life and circumstances? Consider Ellie’s life in comparison to Sara’s. Is there also a sense of dualism there that could be explored?

Another notion that inherently accompanies the idea of in-betweenness, a state of suspension between two worlds, is that of transition. Consider the passage below wherein Sara reflects upon her own painting, describing it as an “allegory of transit.” Compare and contrast Sara’s commentary to Ellie’s interpretation of the same work. How might each of these interpretations alter a viewer’s experience of the work?

“ She wonders sometimes if she isn’t painting an allegory of

her daughter’s transit between the living and the dead, a girl

trudging forever through the snow.” (Sara, p. 42)

In the passage below Ellie observes that painters seem to have the luxury of not having to consider the transitional moments of their characters. Do you agree with this sentiment? Consider the painting to the left. How, if at all, has the artist addressed the transitions of his character?

“ She wonders how he will get out of the easy chair in a way

that’s remotely graceful. He’ll stand to top up her wine, then

perhaps hold her glass while he leans over to kiss her again.

Novelists have this same problem, she thinks, Dickens and

Austen and everyone since: how to get people in and out of

rooms, up and out of chairs. That problem doesn’t exist for

painters.” (Ellie, p. 237)

Aert van der Neer, A Winter Landscape with a Windmill, 1646, oil on panel, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Foundation, BF.1979.5.

Félix Emile-Jean Vallotton, Woman Writing in an Interior, 1904, oil on board, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Audrey Jones Beck, 98.307.

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Through the Lens: Water and the Eye

Each of us experience the world through different lenses. Dominic Smith addresses this idea in his book, however, in many ways the lenses he describes do not always operate as mechanisms for clarity. Rather, they become almost a cloud that hides the truth, or an obstacle that holds his characters back from revelation. The first passage below describes Marty’s demeanor as he flies from New York to Sydney to deliver his painting to the museum. He likens the midflight experience to the sensation of being submerged underwater. Consider that sensation for a moment, and the emotions or anxieties it elicits. How is that sensation reflective of Marty’s circumstances in the moment, and perhaps his relationships with the women in his life?

“ Darkness at high altitude, the midflight quietude,

always makes him think of the bottom of the ocean.

There’s a submarine quality to the experience, a

sense of dredging the bottom instead of scraping

up against the stratosphere. The stars pinhole the

dome of black, but he always thinks of looking up

to a surface, of glimpsing stars through a film of

water or ice.” (Marty, p. 114)

Compare and contrast Marty’s passage above to Sara’s below. Consider the imagery she conjures after having “broken through” the ice. What does Sara’s passage suggest about the other side of the lens?

“ For an instant she doesn’t know that she’s fallen

through. The river, under all that ice, is a burning flood.

The moonlit sky replaced by a dome of shattered white

glass. A searing underworld of distorted shape and

sound. It’s only when she tries to take a breath that she

knows she’s been swallowed up. Her hands rake above

her head, as if she’s trying to climb a ladder. Everything

dims away as she sinks toward the cold sludge of the

riverbed.” (Sara, p. 280)

Lenses can also manifest as the way we see or how we observe the world, as opposed to a physical layer, mechanism, or membrane. When Ellie works with her conservation team at the museum in Sydney, they discover another figure buried beneath the surface layers of paint. The figure is described as engaging in an act of twin observation. How can this idea of successive looking be applied to other characters or instances in the book? What does the act then of covering the figure, allowing the idea to “fall away,” suggest about the message the artist is trying to send, and/or consequently about the artist?

Theodoros Stamos, Very Low Sun-High Snow, 1962, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Caroline Wiess Law, 200.947.

Constantin Brancusi, A Muse, polished bronze, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by Mrs. Herman Brown and Mrs. William Stamps Farish, 62.1. © Artists Rights Society (ARS) New York / ADAGP, Paris

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“ In the original painting, Sara de Vos had at some point painted the outline of another figure, a woman,

standing at the edge of the wood . . . It has the otherworldly quality of an apparition, a half-woman

hovering in a silver-white corona. There is the faint suggestion of two eyes, hollowed out in radio-

graphic relief, and they’re directed at the girl standing against the tree. It’s a woman watching a

girl watching the skaters at the edge of a wood. The drama was first envisioned as the act of twin

observation—a witness to the onlooker—an idea that fell away as the painting unfolded.” (Ellie, p. 177)

In the passage below Sara mentions the camera obscura, a device employed by many artists during the time to aid in the construction of their compositions. Despite the use of such an apparatus, designed to provide clarity, Sara suggests that the nature of art is such that it never shows a true reflection of the natural world. There is always a measure of distortion. Do you agree with this sentiment as it applies to art? How could this idea be extended beyond the realm of aesthetics?

“As she unpacks the camera obscura, it strikes her

that she has never painted exactly what she sees.

Surely, this is the way of all art. The painter sees the

world as if through the watery lens of a pond. Certain

things ripple and distort while others are magnified

and strangely clear.” (Sara, p. 223)

Questions of Authenticity: What Constitutes the Real vs. the Fake?

There are multiple ways we could consider the notion of authenticity as it applies to the contextual framework of this book. There is certainly a commercial aspect to it, as “copies” of original artworks are often deemed inauthentic and thus less valuable. It is within the arenas of intent and perception that we can begin to address questions of authenticity as they apply to social constructs.

Consider the passage below, wherein Marty describes his state of mind following the theft of his painting. It is clear that he has allowed the painting some authority over his emotional state. He seems to have forged a very personal relationship with the work. How has this connection, and his confrontation with the “fake,” rippled through his other relationships throughout the narrative?

“Since discovering it was gone, Rachel has emerged from her depression to join a small but active

social club, Gretchen rebounded after their near-dalliance, and he’s been promoted at work.

And yet the thought of sleeping under the fake for months riles him in a way that feels intensely

personal. A stranger very likely stood on his king-size mattress to remove a painting that’s been in

his family for over three hundred years. Oblivious, he’d hunkered down like a fool every night, the

wrong girl standing at the birch tree as he drifted off.” (Marty, p. 99)

Claude Monet, Water Lilies (Nymphéas), 1907, oil on canvas, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Mrs. Harry C. Hanszen, 68.31.

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Another question surrounding authenticity becomes, where does it reside? Is it as simple as provenance on a page, tracing the lineage of the work back to its original maker? Or is it more complex and personal than that, perhaps rather an attitude or even a moment of profound reconciliation? Who ultimately mediates matters of authenticity?

“ You live among the ruins of the past, carry them

in your pockets, wishing you’d been decent and

loving and talented and brave. Instead you were vain

and selfish, capable of love but always giving less than

everything you had. You held back. You hoarded. You

lived among beautiful things. The paintings on your

walls, the Dutch rivers and kitchens, the Flemish

peasant frolics, they give off fumes and dull with age,

but connect you to a bloodline of want, to shipbuilders

and bankers who stared up at them as their own lives

tapered off. Like trees, they have breathed in the air

around them and now they exhale some of their

previous owners’ atoms and molecules. They could

last for a thousand years, these paintings and that

buoys you as you drift off, a layer just above sleep.

Skimming the pond, Rachel used to call it, or was that

something you once said to her?” (Marty, p. 269)

Author Biography

Dominic Smith grew up in Sydney, Australia, and now lives in Austin, Texas. He is the author, most recently, of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, a New York Times Best Seller, a New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice, and an Amazon Editors’ Top Pick. His writing has appeared in numerous publications, including The Atlantic Monthly, Texas Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, and the New York Times. His other novels are The Mercury Visions of Louis Daguerre, The Beautiful Miscellaneous, and Bright and Distant Shores. Dominic’s awards include the Dobie Paisano Fellowship from the Texas Institute of Letters, the Sherwood Anderson Fiction Prize, the Gulf Coast Fiction Prize, and a new works grant

from the Australia Council for the Arts. His fiction has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and been shortlisted for The Age Book of the Year and the Vance Palmer Prize, two of Australia’s foremost literary awards. Smith serves on the fiction faculty in the Warren Wilson MFA Program for Writers and has taught at the University of Texas at Austin, Southern Methodist University, and Rice University.

Paul Outerbridge, Antique Display, 1938, carbro print, the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, museum purchase funded by the Caroline Wiess Law Accessions Endowment Fund, The Manfred Heiting Collection, 2002.1789.

Learning and Interpretation programs receive generous funding from the Sterling-Turner Foundation; Institute of Museum and Library Services; ExxonMobil; MD Anderson Cancer Center; Occidental Petroleum; Leslie and Brad Bucher; Houston Junior Woman’s Club; Mr. and Mrs. Melbern G. Glasscock; The Windgate Charitable Foundation; the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; Mr. William J. Hill; and the Susan Vaughan Foundation.