Van Eyck Arnolfini Portrait 2000x1360

Detail from The Arnolfini Wedding (Jan van Eyck, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons)

 Van Eyck, The Portraits 

(Event 2: Sat 3rd Oct 2026 3.00pm Little Missenden Village Hall)

Nicholas Flory

This November the National Gallery will host the first ever exhibition dedicated to the portraits of Jan van Eyck (1390- 1441). Providing an unprecedented opportunity to see all his surviving independent portraits reunited together for the first time, the exhibition will explore the painter’s remarkable achievements and contribution to the genre. Portraiture as we know it today emerged suddenly under van Eyck’s brush in the 1430s. In contrast to earlier images of kings, rulers and nobles which often bore little resemblance to their subjects, van Eyck produced minutely observed likenesses of individuals, pulsating with life and capturing every detail of their features. His works also document a transitional moment in who might sit for a portrait. No longer the preserve of the elite, van Eyck painted merchants, craftsmen and family members.

This lecture will discuss van Eyck’s life and work and introduce the extraordinary achievements he made in painting. It will cover his innovations in the genre of portraiture, what is known about the people who sat for him, and the manner in which he so brilliantly captured their likenesses. 

Conservator Jill Dunkerton  gives a fascinating short talk about conserving the man with the red hat on the National Gallery website and on YouTube.

Nicholas Flory is the David Scrase Project Curator at the National Gallery, working on the upcoming van Eyck exhibition. He was previously the Gallery’s Simon Sainsbury Curatorial Fellow for Paintings before 1600, during which time he was involved with the redisplay of the Gallery’s collection for its bicentenary and worked on the exhibition Siena: The Rise of Painting 1300-1350. He received his PhD from the Courtauld Institute of Art in 2022, where he also taught as an Associate Lecturer.

Online booking is managed by TicketSource. This event may be booked from the Tickets link on this page but, when booking for multiple events, it may be more convenient to use our Little Missenden Festival page on TicketSource.