Jan Van Eyck (1395-1441)

Picture Study is simple. Look at the picture with your children for a few minutes, and then talk about what you saw. Try to remember as much about the piece as you can. Enjoy the beauty of it. Art is not a chore; it’s a pleasure. Beginning our Ancient Beauty theme, we’ve chosen some pieces of Jan Van Eyck’s work for this month.

Biography:

Dutch painter Jan van Eyck was born in the tiny town of Maaseyck (then known as Eyck) sometime in the last decade of the 14th century. He was part of a family of painters. It’s believed that Jan van Eyck is the inventor of oil painting.

Erich Gombrich tells us: “What he achieved was a new prescription or the preparation of paints before they were put on the panel. Painters at that time did not buy ready-made coolers in tubes or boxes. They had to prepare their own pigments, mostly from colored plants and minerals. These they ground to powder between two stones — or let their apprentice grind them — and, before use, they added some liquid to bind the powder into a kind of paste.” Until Van Eyck came along, artists typically created that paste with egg, and the combination was called tempera. Tempera made smooth transitions between colors difficult, and it dried relatively quickly. Van Eyck decided to bind his colors with oil instead of egg and was thrilled with the way the colors could be layered and highlighted. The oil also made the paint dry more slowly and allowed the artist to manipulate the colors as they dried far better than tempera paint did (Gombrich 172).

Jan van Eyck went on to become a court painter and a sought-after portraitist. He painted a wide variety of works, from court documentation to religious pieces. His workshop continued his work after his death in 1441.

Gombrich, Erich H. “The Story of Art : Gombrich E. H. : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming.” Internet Archive: The Story of Art, Phaidon Publishers, 1 Jan. 1970, archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.29158/page/n180/mode/1up?q=eyck.