THE PARISIAN HEIST

A dual storyline connected by van Gogh’s legacy, the woman who first championed his art, and the women now fighting to protect it.

Before Vincent van Gogh was a household name, he died having sold barely any of his work: This is a familiar tale, and yet the name “Jo van Gogh” is rarely part of it. In 1996 Paris, Stella Swanson, an elderly woman married into a family of art dealers, reveals her connection to Jo in confidence to her housekeeper, Emma, an American art student struggling to make ends meet. Stella’s grandmother Claire was the longtime companion to Vincent van Gogh’s sister-in-law, Jo. Through Claire’s storyline in the 1890s, we learn that after her husband Theo’s death, Jo took it upon herself to continue his work of introducing Vincent’s art to the world—and Claire was vital to Jo’s success. Back in 1996, as Emma spends more time with Stella, she begins to share Stella’s sentiment that she was wronged by the Swanson family after her husband died. After devoting her life to the Swanson legacy, she’s been completely shut out, the precious art lining her salon walls now returned to the company collection. Stella introduces Emma to her step-grandson, Matthew, who works at the helm of the Swanson empire along with his sister, Caroline. Unlike Caroline, Matthew is sympathetic toward Stella and reveals some less-than-favorable information about Swanson’s business practices. Emma finds herself neck-deep in a plot with her roommates, emboldened to help Stella and unravel a massive art fraud in the process. “Every artist or art lover has thought at some point about how they would steal a painting from a famous museum,” she thinks. Well, if that’s true, it might explain why the plot to break in to the Musée d’Orsay is overly simple (Ocean’s 8 this is not). The modern storyline is fast-paced and cinematic, sacrificing character development for action. It’s easiest to root for Claire, whose perspective brings Jo van Gogh and her contributions to life in full color.

Billed as a thriller but more satisfying as historical fiction; the rich story behind van Gogh’s success earns the spotlight.