The Last Painting of Sara de Vos - October CC Book Club Selection

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

Thoughts about the ending of this book

@PlantMom

just finished. What a satisfying reading experience!

i agree! I felt the same way!
But, it had it moments, when I wasn’t so sure I liked how it was wrapping up.

As I read one of the ending scenes I actually shouted "no, No… NO… OH!!!NO!, WAY !!! " a loud.

It was the skating scene,when Tomas and Sara go out on an idyllic night, a night so perfect, so beautiful I knew something dreadful was about to happen.

When Sara falls through the ice, I yelled out, " no, no " with such anger building towards Smith!
**“Do not let her drown, do not let it end this way” **I thought.

Thankfully, Smith allows lovely Sara to paint one last painting - a painting “BY” Sara de vos, “OF” Sara de vos.

Like @ignatius , I agree, even though she knew she was dying, and this was sad time, @mary13, we know she found love. She painted " her knight in shining armor" Tomas on a horse. What an act of love, a gift to him, what a treasure for our Ellie to eventually discover.

Unlike the “edge of the wood” with a woman/mother/ Sara sketched in to the original sketch,only to be erased, the final self portrait** “of” **Sara de vos, is one of happiness, of Sara as central figure, prominent in her regal dress, no longer a ghostly, sad grieving mother.

It will be that picture, the "last painting of Sara " I hope to remember.

So this was a satisfying read, with a " happily" ever after ending. It worked for me.

For, as becomes clear as the novel reaches its deeply moving conclusion,The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is simultaneously a story about the traces we leave and the spaces we cannot fill. Or, as the scientist assigned to examine the two paintings in Sydney says when her infrared analysis reveals the figure of a woman who is and is not the grieving Sara hidden beneath the paint, watching the child who is and is not Kathrijn, a ghostly remnant of an earlier version of the painting: “The forger was too exacting, too superficial. Only the real artist has the false beginning.”

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/arts/review/dominic-smiths-last-painting-of-sara-vos-paints-a-tender-portrait/news-story/ef2c6713d04af15760e8cefb3ae3f01b

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

in contrast, our modern day woman Ellie was not saved by a knight in shining armor, Marty. Elle’s story has a modern day ending and, also, deeply satisfying. The burning of her creation, seemed justified and closure, as she symbolically destroyed her former “inauthentic” self.

[Mary13]

@SouthJerseyChessMom

Unlike the “edge of the wood” with a woman/mother/ Sara sketched in to the original sketch,only to be erased, the final self portrait “of” Sara de vos, is one of happiness, of Sara as central figure, prominent in her regal dress, no longer a ghostly, sad grieving mother.

I like that interpretation. In the healing process, Sara changes from a ghost to a woman of substance.

Sara is the strongest woman in the book. Well, except maybe Griet. She had such a very minor role in the novel, but she fascinated me. It was like she’d wandered out of the pages of Kristin Lavransdatter.

[mathmom]

I too liked Sarah’s happy ending. I remembered that Barent had been a jerk for leaving her, but I’d forgotten that we see that he’s a jerk right from the start. From when they go to look at the whale:

Sara says that she believes this arrangement will work nicely, though she believes the scene will carry more drama if painted from above - the enormity of the glassy ocean for scale, the fish marauded by ant-like city dwellers, the shadows shortening in the noon day sun. […] But recently she’s learned that Barent prefers her ideas in the service of her own, so she says nothing.

And boy does that describe this image! http://www.fsgbookkeeping.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/05/7.jpg though I like the paintings that are less similar too: https://static-secure.guim.co.uk/sys-images/Guardian/Pix/pictures/2014/6/4/1401872576564/Whale-painting—after-014.jpg (this painting has a fascinating history - its whale was only recently discovered when they were cleaning the painting.)

It’s no accident when she paints her own masterpiece that she paints it from above.

Example of weird word choice: “He sits there until the room bloats with darkness” (page 10). That image just did not work for me.

[NJTheatreMOM]

@mathmom

Example of weird word choice: “He sits there until the room bloats with darkness” (page 10). That image just did not work for me.

Perfect example of the kind of word choice that made me go, “No…no…oh no!”

Light bloats, darkness shrinks. Maybe he meant to write “blots.”

[ignatius]

We know that Leyster changes direction while painting her Self-Portrait thanks to infrared light.

https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/monarchy-enlightenment/baroque-art1/holland/v/leyster-self

[ignatius]

^^^ I got interrupted while posting. I meant to add that I found the ways used to authenticate Sara’s painting interesting particularly having the infrared light reveal that she painted over a figure.

[SouthJerseyChessMom]

Great link from Ignatius! Thanks.
Interesting that Leyster had an image of herself on the canvas, so similar to Sara’s ghost image on “edge of wood”.

Did anyone notice a Smith’s “nod” to Leyster when he writes about Sara’s last painting.

He writes about the horse’s “star” and something about remembering names. Sorry don’t have copying capabilities from
Kindle.

I highlighted this when I read it because I thought it awkward, and remembered Leyster’s identity as the artist was revealed by her signature initials and star.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Judith_Leyster

She signed her works with a monogram with her initials JL with a star attached. This was a play on words; “Lei-ster” meant “Lead star” in Dutch, which was the common name for the North star used at the time by Dutch mariners. The Leistar was the name of her father’s brewery in Haarlem.6

[TatinG]

It bothered me that Ellie never had to atone publicly for the forgery. It was all conveniently ‘fixed’ with Marty’s money.

[ignatius]

And another painting mentioned - Rembrandt’s The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Tulp: https://www.khanacademy.org/humanities/monarchy-enlightenment/baroque-art1/holland/v/rembrandt-tulp

[ignatius]

I’m not sure I would have been happy with Ellie’s public humiliation re the forgery. I do like that she stands ready to accept the consequences whatever they may be.

Personally, I think that when Ellie returns to her apartment after that disastrous weekend with Marty, she should handle things differently before fleeing. She should return the original painting to Marty (by courier), destroy the forgery (or sign and date it as a reproduction), and return her payment to Gabriel. She has both paintings and the money at hand. She can inform Gabriel that Marty knows too much and, for both their sakes, she needs to call an immediate halt. =; Or she could inform Marty that both paintings are in her apt to do with as he wishes and then return Gabriel’s money along with the necessity of why. Of course, had she done all this, we wouldn’t have a story.

[mathmom]

^That would certainly have been a simpler solution and she wouldn’t have had the guilt hanging over her head - because I think living with wondering when the axe was going to fall must have been pretty awful. I like to think she just wasn’t thinking straight and if she’s thought about it longer and more logically she would have done the right thing. The author tries to convince us that her background provided the psychology for her choices - I don’t know if it really did.

But the idea of atonement is interesting in and of itself. I don’t know if any of you have read Ian McKewn’s Atonement, but I thought the exploration of what you can do after you’ve done a terrible deed with horrible consequences was interesting. Sometimes no matter how terrible you feel about your actions, there’s no real adequate atonement to be made. I felt that if Marty forgave her, that was good enough. She atones by destroying her work.

You can see Leyster’s signature at the bottom of this page: http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/education/teachers/lessons-activities/self-portraits/leyster.html The line from the book is: “Tomas rides his horse up to the window and smiles at her from across the big mare’s white-diamond forehead. It’s called a star, she remembers, this marking on a horse’s head. She wants to remember names. She wants to remember him looking back at her in the twilight.” My thought is, and is it called a star in Dutch?

[NJTheatreMOM]

I think the horse marking is called a star in Dutch.

https://nl.dreamstime.com/stock-fotografie-mooi-donker-baai-arabisch-paard-met-een-ster-image23822922

“Paard” = horse. “Ster” = star.

[mathmom]

^Not to surprising as when I was in Holland I felt like a lot of what was written looked like a cross between English and German. In German star is “Stern”. (And horse is “Pferd.”)

[Mary13]

@ignatius

Even if she hates “At the Edge of the Wood” what does she gain by replacing it with a fake? It’s not like the picture isn’t still hanging above the bed.

She gets the most passive-aggressive victory ever devised. If she was going through a “Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned” phase, orchestrating the swap might have provided her with deep satisfaction, even if Marty had never figured it out. Okay, it’s a little psychotic, and I’m not convinced that’s the story, but it’s fun to think about.

[nottelling]

Both Rachel and Marty seem to have superstitious reactions to the painting, as if the eyes of Marty’s father were looking down on them in bed. Kind of strange that they never thought to hang it somewhere else in the large apartment.

[ignatius]

@Mary13: I don’t think Rachel thought of herself as a woman scorned - at that time, she wasn’t. On a different note, I am now a mite worried about ever making you truly mad at me. Yikes!

[Mary13]

^ LOL!

We learn that Marty had a habit of “dating,” and Rachel probably knew a thing or two about those dalliances before his full-blown affair with Ellie. But yes, it would be a bit over-the-top in the revenge department.

[Caraid]

@Mary13 - I kind of like the way you think. I had similar thoughts.

[Mary13]

Following up on a couple of points raised earlier…

@nottelling

What about the almost-affair with the secretary? What did folks think about that?

My take on the Gretchen interlude is that while that chapter doesn’t move the plot along, it’s essential in revealing Marty’s character. We see his M.O. with women and that he is ripe for an affair: “…there’s been a lineage of near misses, office infatuations and lunches with protégées in barrettes and woolen skirts.” With Gretchen, “he’s readying to cross a new line” (p. 55). He can’t quite take that step though, until Ellie comes along and provides him with an excuse for very bad behavior.

@CBBBlinker

at one point early in the book, Sara goes to a lecture by herself at night. Really?

When I started reading about the paintings online, it led to following the inevitable links about 17th century Dutch women. I found that they had a surprising amount of independence. So maybe it wasn’t all that unlikely?:

http://www.womenhistoryblog.com/2008/03/dutch-womens-rights.html
http://nyhrarticles.blogspot.com/2013/04/dutch-women-in-seventeenth-century-new.html