In the 1600s Sara de Vos, a mother and painter, loses her young daughter suddenly to illness.

In her grief, she secretly begins painting a dark landscape of a girl watching an ice skater from the edge of a wood. In 1950s New York, Martijn de Groot has 'At The Edge of a Wood' hanging above his bed. Thought it is a dark, peculiar painting, by a scarcely known female painter of the Golden Age, he holds the painting dear and when it is stolen, he is bereft.

In Brooklyn, struggling art student Ellie Shipley accepts a commission to paint an intricate forgery of de Vos' sole surviving work, not realizing that her decision will come to haunt her successful academic career.