Hubert van Eyck

Hubert van Eyck (also Huybrecht van Eyck) (c. 1385–90 – 18 September 1426) was an Early Netherlandish painter and older brother of Jan van Eyck, as well as Lambert and Margareta, also painters. The absence of any single work that he can clearly be said to have completed continues to make assessment of his achievement highly uncertain, although for centuries he had the reputation of being an outstanding founding artist of Early Netherlandish painting.

He was probably born in Maaseik, in what is now the Belgian province of Limburg, into a family in the gentry.

As the name was not a very common one, he is probably the "Magister Hubertus, pictor" recorded as having been paid in 1409 for panels in the church of Onze Lieve Vrouwe, Tongeren. He is probably also the Master Hubert who had painted a panel bequeathed in 1413 by Jan de Visch van der Capelle to his daughter, a Benedictine nun near Grevelingen; however he does not appear in guild records, and his heirs did not include any children, so it has been suggested that he may have been in minor orders, perhaps attached to what was then the abbey, now the cathedral, of St Bavo at Ghent, where his Ghent Altarpiece still remains, settling in Ghent by c. 1420.

Around the time of his settlement, or shortly afterwards, he began his only surviving documented work, the Ghent Altarpiece in St Bavo's. However the painting was not finished until six years after his death, in 1432, so the degree to which the surviving altarpiece reflects his work, rather than that of Jan who took it over, remains much discussed. An inscription on the frame, which was destroyed in the beeldenstorm in 1566, stated that Hubert van Eyck "maior quo nemo repertus" (greater than anyone) started the altarpiece, but that Jan van Eyck – calling himself "arte secundus" (second best in the art) – completed it in 1432.

Writing in 1933, art historian Bryson Burroughs, who at that time attributed to Hubert the Crucifixion and Last Judgement diptych, describing him as "the fountainhead of northern painting", suggests he did the underdrawing for the Ghent Altarpiece with Jan painting in after his brother's death; some form of this view remains common among specialists. Modern scientific investigation reveals various changes between the finished work and the lower painted levels and the underdrawing. Today the inscription is often regarded as an overgenerous fraternal tribute. Given the circumstances, the Ghent Altarpiece is a difficult work to use for comparison when assessing other attributions, especially as several other artists from the brothers' workshops probably worked on it as well.

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