At the Edge of a Wood

At the Edge of a Wood is a 1636 oil painting by Sara de Vos. The painting serves as an allegory for life and death as well as being between two places. The painting, inspired by Sara’s personal witnessing of a similar scene, features her daughter at the edge of a wood, looking down toward a frozen river where others are ice skating. The girl is caught between two places –between life and death –just as Sara feels caught between the life she knew when her daughter was alive and the life she knows now that her daughter is dead. The painting is purchased by Pieter de Groot at an auction not long after Sara is abandoned by her husband. Having been passed down for three centuries in the de Groot family, Marty de Groot inherits it. In the late 1950s...