The Lost Van Gogh: A Crime Thriller With Historical Elements

 The mystery book club that I attend has three selections every month.  We get selection lists together months in advance so that we have plenty of time to obtain and review them.  Sometimes I notice a title that particularly interests me.  So I get hold of it ASAP and read it.  The Lost Van Gogh  by Jonathan Santlofer is an example of a book club selection that I read early.

The Night Portrait by Laura Morelli is another historical fiction that I've reviewed that has similar themes. See my review here . Both The Lost Van Gogh and The Night Portrait deal with Nazi art theft. They are also both dual period novels. 

 A big difference is that in  The Night Portrait, one of those periods is World War II.  The WWII protagonist is an art conservator. She was preserving Nazi looted art for posterity.  In order for these works to be hanging in contemporary museums or in the homes of 21st century art collectors, there would need to have been someone like her, making sure it survived.  WWII is not one of the periods that Santlofer's protagonists live in.  His characters live in the present or in Van Gogh's late 19th century context.

                                       

                                 

I consider The Lost Van Gogh a crime novel rather than a mystery.  It deals with the theft of Van Gogh's rumored final self portrait.  It's not definitely certain whether it still exists or not.

The contemporary protagonist in The Lost Van Gogh is artist Luke Perrone whose great grandfather was an art thief.  So readers shouldn't be surprised that not all the art referenced in this book was acquired legitimately.  

The first time I saw a Van Gogh painting was probably in New York's Museum of Modern Art.  In fact it may have been The Starry Night  which I associate with Don McLean's song Vincent, a song written in honor of Van Gogh that is often referred to as "Starry Starry Night". You'd think that a 20th century song would not be the first thing that pops into my mind when viewing a 19th century painting, but that is what has happened to me. <lol!>

I normally don't comment on  the practical logistics in a fictional scene, but I was bemused by a character whose hands were tied being able to hold a gun.  I wondered if he was holding the gun in his teeth.  Seriously?!

After reading in The Lost Van Gogh about so many paintings by well known artists having been stolen by the Nazis, I looked up my favorite painting.  It happens to be by Vermeer.  It's called Girl Asleep.  I've seen it many times at the New York Metropolitan Museum of Art.  When I travel to New York, I like to pay a visit to Girl Asleep.  In the 1696 Vermeer catalog, it was apparently called A Drunken Sleeping Maid at a Table.  This is a example of late 17th century prejudice against people who have to work for a living. Why did the cataloger decide that she was drunk?  I think she was overworked and exhausted.  

Although Santlofer has written series books, The Lost Van Gogh isn't one of them.  It's an independent work which I thought was well written and well researched.