The Last Painting of Sara De Vos

“He will come to suspect that the painting’s disappearance has caused Rachel’s long depression to end and accounts for his firm finally making him partner. Or that the cursed painting explains three hundred years of gout, rheumatism, heart failure, intermittent barrenness, and stroke in his bloodline. Wherever the painting hung—in London, Amsterdam, or New York—the previous owners, he comes to realize, never lived past the age of sixty.”

Marty engages in magical thinking about the painting by blaming its presence for events in his own life and those of his ancestors. This attitude toward art is one that emphasizes that the meaning of art is in the eye of the beholder, rather than inherent in the art itself.

“But recently she’s learned that Barent prefers her ideas in the service of his own, so she says nothing.”

As a woman in a patriarchal society, Sara sees herself and her opinions about art, an area in which she has deep knowledge, as subordinate to her husband’s preferences. In this quotation, Sara accommodates herself to the gender relations of the time.

“Sara stops painting altogether until winter arrives and the canals freeze over. One blue afternoon, she sees a young girl trudging through a snowy thicket above a frozen branch of the Amstel. Something about the light, about the girl emerging alone from the wood, rouses her to the canvas. Painting a still life suddenly seems unimaginable.”

Sara’s choice to begin At the Edge of a Wood is inspired in part by a chance sight she sees; her choice of composition and style reflects her own moods. This quotation thus offers insight into the psychology of the artist as creator.