Based on a real museum theft, the Art Forger has as many layers as the painting that's copied: After the Bath by Degas.
Claire Roth does reproductions of famous paintings for a living while she waits for her moment as an artist in her own right.
She's asked by a prominent art gallery owner to make a copy of what he says is an original work that was stolen in the art museum theft years ago. She will be paid well, and she will get a showing of her own art at his gallery when all is accomplished.
Claire recognizes that the "original" painting she's been hired to copy is also a copy. She knows she should tell the gallery owner, but too much is at stake for her personally. Also, what if he is testing her?
The painting is begun, on a canvas that held another painting from the same era to help it seem authentic.
She also begins to research who might have made the copy she's working from. Is it a modern day forgery or one done in Degas time? She knows her forgers, having studied them and their techniques as part of her job copying paintings.
In a series of letters Claire doesn't see, but the reader is given, we see the story behind the original painting and a reason for a forgery to have been displayed at the Gardner Museum, perhaps from the beginning.
When the gallery owner is arrested after selling her fake, her own freedom is at stake as she continues to try to locate the original painting or its fate.
This is our book group book for January. I found the first half of the book focusing on painting methodology to be slow, but the second half to be suspenseful and entertaining.
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