Dominic Smith

A rare seventeenth-century painting links three lives, on three continents, over three centuries in the last painting of Sara de Vos, an exhilarating new novel from Dominic Smith.Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the citys Guild of St. Luke. Though women do not paint landscapes (they are generally restricted to indoor subjects), a wintry outdoor scene haunts Sara: She cannot shake the image of a young girl from a nearby village, standing alone beside a silver birch at dusk, staring out at a group of skaters on the frozen river below. Defying the expectations of her time, she decides to paint it.New York City, 1957: The only known surviving work of Sara de Vos, At the Edge of a Wood, hangs in the bedroom of a wealthy Manhattan lawyer, Marty de Groot, a descendant of the original owner. It is a beautiful but comfortless landscape. The lawyers marriage is prominent but comfortless, too. When a struggling art history grad student, Ellie Shipley, agrees to forge the painting for a dubious art dealer, she finds herself entangled with its owner in ways no one could predict.Sydney, 2000: Now a celebrated art historian and curator, Ellie Shipley is mounting an exhibition in her field of specialization: female painters of the Dutch Golden Age. When it becomes apparent that both the original At the Edge of a Wood and her forgery are en route to her museum, the life she has carefully constructed threatens to unravel entirely and irrevocably.

From the award-winning author of the acclaimed bestseller The Last Painting of Sara de Vos comes a radiant new novel tracing the intertwined fates of a silent film director and his muse.The Electric Hotel winds through the nascent days of cinema in Paris and Fort Lee, New Jersey - Americas first movie town - and the battlefields of Belgium during World War I. A sweeping work of historical fiction, it shimmers between past and present as it tells the story of the rise and fall of a prodigious film studio and one mans doomed obsession with all that passes in front of the viewfinder.For nearly half a century, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films, who started out as a concession agent for the Lumiere brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days taking photographs of Sunset Boulevard. But when a film-history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotel - the lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montrose - the past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments and reels in desperate need of restoration, and Claudes memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.The Electric Hotel is a portrait of a man entranced by the magic of movie-making, a luminous romance and a whirlwind trip through the heady, endlessly inventive days of early cinema.

A sweeping work of historical fiction from the New York Timesabestselling author Dominic Smith, The Electric Hotel is a spellbinding story of art and love.For more than thirty years, Claude Ballard has been living at the Hollywood Knickerbocker Hotel. A French pioneer of silent films who started out as a concession agent for the Lumire brothers, the inventors of cinema, Claude now spends his days foraging for mushrooms in the hills of Los Angeles and taking photographs of runaways and the striplings along Sunset Boulevard. But when a film history student comes to interview Claude about The Electric Hotelathe lost masterpiece that bankrupted him and ended the career of his muse, Sabine Montroseathe past comes surging back. In his run-down hotel suite, the ravages of the past are waiting to be excavated: celluloid fragments in desperate need of restoration, as well as Claudeas memories of the woman who inspired and beguiled him.The Electric Hotel is a portrait of a man entranced by the magic of moviemaking, a luminous romance, and a whirlwind trip through early cinema. Sit back, relax, and enjoy the show.

The debut novel from the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos reimagines the life of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of photography, who becomes convinced that the world is going to end when his mind unravels due to mercury poisoning. He is determined to reconnect with the only woman he has ever loved before the End comes.Louis Daguerres story is set against the backdrop of a Paris prone to bohemian excess and social unrest. Poets and dandies debate art and style in the cafes while students and rebels fill the garrets with revolutionary talk and gun smoke. It is here, amid this strange and beguiling setting, that Louis Daguerre sets off to capture his doomsday subjects. Louis enlists the help of the womanizing poet Charles Baudelaire, known to the salon set as the "Prince of Clouds" and a jaded but beautiful prostitute named Pigeon. Together they scour the Paris underworld for images worthy of Daguerres list. But Louis is also confronted by a chance to reunite with the only woman hes ever loved. Half a lifetime ago, Isobel Le Fournier kissed Louis Daguerre in a wine cave outside of Orleans. The result was a proposal, a rejection, and a misunderstanding that outlasted three kings and an emperor. Now, in the countdown to his apocalypse, Louis wants to understand why he has carried the memory of that kiss for so long.

In the 1600s Sara de Vos loses her young daughter suddenly to illness. In her grief, she secretly begins painting a dark landscape of a girl watching a group of ice skaters from the edge of a wood. In 1950s New York, Martijn de Groot has At the Edge of a Wood hanging above his bed. Though it is a dark, peculiar painting, he holds it dear and when it is stolen, he is bereft. In Brooklyn, struggling art student Ellie Shipley accepts a commission to paint an intricate forgery of the painting, not realising that her decision will come to haunt her successful academic career. Gorgeously written, brilliantly conceived and executed, filled with tension and revelation, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is one of those rare books that stops time as you read it. This is a novel you will want to revisit for the sheer pleasure of watching a master at work.

Amsterdam, 1631: Sara de Vos becomes the first woman to be admitted as a master painter to the city s Guild of St. Luke. Though women do not paint landscapes (they are generally restricted to indoor subjects), a wintry outdoor scene haunts Sara: She cannot shake the image of a young girl from a nearby village, standing alone beside a silver birch at dusk, staring out at a group of skaters on the frozen river below. Defying the expectations of her time, she decides to paint it

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos, a dazzling new novel explores the fault lines that can cause a family to drift apart and the unexpected events that can pull them back together.Nathan Nelson is the average son of a genius. His father, a physicist of small renown, has prodded him toward greatness from an early ageenrolling him in whiz kid summer camps, taking him to the icy tundra of Canada to track a solar eclipse, and teaching him college algebra. But despite Samuel Nelsons efforts, Nathan remains ordinary.Then, in the summer of 1987, everything changes. While visiting his small-town grandfather in Michigan, Nathan is involved in a terrible accident. After a brief clinical death -- which he later recalls as a lackluster affair lasting less than the length of a Top 40 pop songhe falls into a coma. When he awakens, Nathan finds that everyday life is radically different. His perceptions of sight, sound, and memory have been irrevocably changed. The doctors and his parents fear permanent brain damage. But the truth of his condition is more unexpected and leads to a renewed chance for Nathan to find his place in the world.Thinking that his sons altered brain is worthy of serious inquiry, Samuel arranges for Nathan to attend the Brook-Mills Institute, a Midwestern research center where savants, prodigies, and neurological misfits are studied and their specialties applied. Immersed in this strange atmosphere -- where an autistic boy can tell you what day Christmas falls on in 3026 but cant tie his shoelaces, where a medical intuitive can diagnose cancer during a long-distance phone call with a patientNathan begins to unravel the mysteries of his new mind, and finally make peace with the crushing weight of his fathers expectations.

En 1631, Sara de Vos se convierte en la primera mujer que es admitida como maestra pintora del Gremio de San Lucas, en Holanda. Tres siglos más tarde, A la orilla de un bosque, la escena invernal de una muchacha que mira a unos patinadores al atardecer, y el unico trabajo de Sara que ha sobrevivido, cuelga en la pared del dormitorio de una pareja que vive en Manhattan. Mientras tanto, Ellie, una estudiante australiana de historia del arte que lucha por mantenerse a flote en Nueva York, realiza una falsificacion del paisaje para un marchante de arte con mala fama. Medio siglo despues, Ellie, ahora comisaria de arte en Sidney, organiza una exposicion de mujeres pintoras del siglo de oro holandes. Ambas versiones de A la orilla de un bosque, la original y la falsificada, estan de camino a su museo y amenazan con arruinar su reputacion.

Trois époques, trois continents, trois destins entremêlés, bouleversés par la force de lart. Une enquête palpitante sur les traces dun mystérieux tableau, un roman porté par une construction raffinée

From the New York Times bestselling author of The Last Painting of Sara de Vos comes a sweeping historical novel set amid the skyscrapers of 1890s Chicago and the far-flung islands of the South Pacific.In the waning years of the nineteenth century there was a hunger for tribal artifacts, spawning collecting voyages from museums and collectors around the globe. In 1897, one such collector, a Chicago insurance magnate, sponsors an expedition into the South Seas to commemorate the completion of his companys new skyscraperthe worlds tallest building. The ship is to bring back an array of Melanesian weaponry and handicrafts, but also several natives related by blood.Caught up in this scheme are two orphansOwen Graves, an itinerant trader from Chicagos South Side who has recently proposed to the girl he must leave behind, and Argus Niu, a mission houseboy in the New Hebrides who longs to be reunited with his sister. At the cusp of the twentieth century, the expedition forces a collision course between the tribal and the civilized, between two young men plagued by their respective and haunting pasts.An epic and ambitious story that brings to mind E.L. Doctorow, with echoes of Melville and Robert Louis Stevenson, Bright and Distant Shores is a wondrous achievement by a writer known for creating compelling fiction from the fabric of history.

Ámsterdam, 1631. Sara de Vos se convierte en la primera mujer en ser admitida como maestra pintora de la Guilda de San Lucas. Aunque a las mujeres no se les permite pintar paisajes, después de un trágico suceso, la imagen de una niña en un bosque obsesiona a Sara. Desafiando las convenciones de su tiempo, decide pintarla.Nueva York, 1957. La unica obra de Sara de Vos que ha sobrevivido, En el linde de un bosque, pertenece al prestigioso abogado Marty de Groot. Este no puede sospechar que Ellie Shipley, una estudiante australiana de historia del arte, esta a punto de realizar una falsificacion para un marchante de arte con mala fama.Sidney, 2000.Ellie es una reconocida historiadora del arte, y esta organizando una exposicion dedicada a las pintoras del Siglo de Oro holandes. Cuando descubre que los dos cuadros de Sara de Vos, el original y su falsificacion, estan de camino al museo, la vida que ha logrado forjar con tanto esfuerzo amenaza con desplomarse.

Longlisted for the 2017 Walter Scott Prize for Historical FictionIn the 1600s Sara de Vos loses her young daughter suddenly to illness. In her grief, she secretly begins painting a dark landscape of a girl watching a group of ice skaters from the edge of a wood. In 1950s New York, Martijn de Groot has At the Edge of a Wood hanging above his bed. Though it is a dark, peculiar painting, he holds it dear and when it is stolen, he is bereft. In Brooklyn, struggling art student Ellie Shipley accepts a commission to paint an intricate forgery of the painting, not realising that her decision will come to haunt her successful academic career. Gorgeously written, brilliantly conceived and executed, filled with tension and revelation, The Last Painting of Sara de Vos is one of those rare books that stops time as you read it. This is a novel you will want to revisit for the sheer pleasure of watching a master at work.

Un misterioso cuadro del siglo XVII enlaza tres siglos, tres vidas y tres continentes.Ámsterdam, 1631. Sara de Vos, primera mujer admitida como maestra pintora de la Guilda de San Lucas, desafía la prohibicion impuesta a las mujeres y pinta un paisaje.Nueva York, 1957. La unica obra de Sara de Vos que ha sobrevivido pertenece al abogado Marty de Groot. Este no puede sospechar que Ellie Shipley, una estudiante australiana de historia del arte, lo ha falsificado.Sidney, 2000. Ellie esta organizando una exposicion dedicada a las pintoras del Siglo de Oro holandes. Cuando descubre que los dos cuadros de Sara de Vos, el original y su falsificacion, estan de camino al museo, la vida que ha logrado forjar con tanto esfuerzo amenaza con desplomarse.