Among my favourite reads are works that source inspiration for subject material from the art world. Works such as Alex Miller’s Prochownik’s Dream or Paul Morgan’s Turner’s Paintbox draw on the rich cultural heritage of artistic life and bring depth of experience, knowledge and an emotional intuition to their work. Fellow Australian author Dominic Smith’s The Last Painting of Sarade Vos is cut from the same canvas and is an eloquent, well-crafted work that focuses on Dutch painting of the Golden Age. With creative embellishment, Smith illuminates the lesser-known story of female master painters of 17th-century Holland and explores other more contemporary topics such as art conservation and the science behind art forgery.

As an interesting structural format, the story is split across three time frames, each linked by a shared connection to the fictional artist Sara de Vos. The story opens in 1630 in Holland and we meet de Vos as she is dealing with her husband’s abandonment of her and struggling to gain recognition by the Artists’ Guild, an imperative if she is to produce and sell artwork to support herself independently. Cast forward 300 years to 1950 and Michael de Groot, a wealthy Manhattan lawyer, is the custodian of de Vos’s last surviving painting. We also meet Ellie Shipley, an Australian in her final year of an art history PhD at Columbia University. Financial issues together with professional curiosity see Shipley make the fated decision to copy the de Vos painting for a private commission. But when an art heist follows and the forgery is swapped for the original, Shipley’s anonymity may not protect her from criminal or professional repercussions. Many decades later in Sydney, as Shipley curates an exhibition of Dutch female artists, the rogue forgery threatens to show up. What follows is masterfully unexpected.

Natalie Platten