Bettie's Books

ILLUSTRATED WITH EIGHT REPRODUCTIONS IN COLOUROpening: THE advent of the Van Eycks is the most important landmark in the history of painting in northern Europe. With them we open an entirely new chapter, for although the value of oil in various inferior processes of the art had been ascertained and availed of at an earlier period, it was entirely due to their long[12] and painstaking experiments that its use was perfected as the vehicle of colouring matter in picture-painting. Unfortunately, time and its worst incidentals have obliterated the evidence which would have enabled us to follow the development of this new method, just as they have robbed us of all the earlier work of its original expounders, leaving us at the same time much too inconsiderable remains for a comprehensive survey of the school of which they were the finished product. It is a disconcerting experience to encounter primarily the lifework of two such eminent painters at a stage when they were already in the plenitude of their powers, and an experience that must always tax the ingenuity of the student and critic of their art.JOHN ARNOLFINI AND JOAN CENANI, HIS WIFE (By John van Eyck)