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xl HISTORICAL SKETCH OF ART
ture. But while he fails to dispose the crowd of figures in separate
groups, he succeeds in giving to the heads a portrait-like indi-
viduality ; he is careful to render the varied texture of the draperies,
and in modelling the nude figure he closely imitates nature in
every minute particular. For example, in the figure of Adam (now
detached from the original picture and preserved alor
the Brussels Museum, p. 101), even the short hairs of the arms and legs
are carefully elaborated. But the most prising innovation is in
the colouring, to which he gaye wonderful force and harmony,
using it to give effect to an appearance of reality almost deceptive.
The old belief that Hubert invented oil-painting cannot indeed be
unreservedly accepted. But, although oil had long been in use as a
vehicle, Hubert’s merit is not the less conspicuor He is still the
first who adapted the invention to the purposes of art, by e mploying
the fluid medium for the more subtle blending of colours. By this
means he so far facilitated the process of painting, that tl
your to give a faithful, life-like rendering of nature was com-
pletely successful. He possessed himself of the means by which alone
effect could be given to the new impulse in art. We can have no
better proof of the importance attached to this new method of
painting introduced by Hubert, than in the sensation it made in
Italy, where the invention and its publication were inyested with
the attributes of romance.
Hubert’s connection with his brother Jan van Eyck ( born 1381
-1395) is involved in some obscurity, but the latter came to be
regarded as the more capable of the two. Unjustly so, however, as the
younger brother with his own hand bears record, in an ins: scription on
the Altar-piece at Ghent, in these words: ‘Hubertus — major quo
nemo repertus’, —- thus showing that Hubert was at least his e qual.
We are, at the same time, very imperfectly ir
training, though
with Eve in
1e endea-
iformed of Jan’s early
we ee a good deal about his public career.
While Hubert, it woul 1 appear, found favour with the wealthy
burghers of Ghent, Jan nae service in the courts, st of John of
Bavaria, afterwards of Philip the Good. He lived for some years at
the Hague, later in Lille, and after Hubert’s death removed to
Ghent, in order to finish the Altar-piece. In 41432 he migrated to
Bruges, where he died on 9th July, 1440, about fourteen years
after his brother. His peculiar art can best be studied in Bruse
not that many of his works are to be found there, but that the self-
Same genius still pervades the place which inspired the school of
early Flemish painters. Bruges still remains outwardly very
much what it was in the 46th century. The old houses have lost
nothing of their character and dignity by contact with the newer
buildings which have sprung up in their midst; while, in the quiet
of the comparatively-forsaken thoroughfares, there is nothing to
disturb the wanderer in quest of reminiscences of the Bruges of
bygone days. Just as Nuremberg, some half-century ago, vividly re- |