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For the first time, all ten surviving portraits by the Netherlandish painter Jan van Eyck (documented as active from 1422 to 1441) will be brought together in a single exhibition. Entitled “Van Eyck: The Portraits”, the exhibition at the National Gallery in London will run from 21 November 2026 to 11 April 2027, presenting nine paintings and the artist’s only surviving drawing. The works come from major European collections and represent approximately half of the twenty or so surviving paintings attributed to van Eyck himself, one of the most important figures of the Northern Renaissance and a pioneer of modern painting.
The exhibition offers the first opportunity to see all of van Eyck’s surviving portraits together in one place and to compare his extraordinary techniques directly. At its heart is the emergence of a new understanding of portrait likeness, one that placed the individual and their distinctive features at the centre of artistic representation.
While portraits before van Eyck primarily served to convey social status or power, often idealising their subjects, the Netherlandish painter placed particular emphasis on capturing their actual appearance as accurately as possible. He recorded not only …
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Image above: Jan van Eyck, Portrait of a Man with a Blue Chaperon, c. 1428–1430, oil on wood, 19.1 × 13.2 cm (excluding later additions), Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania © Brukenthal National Museum, Sibiu, Romania
