II. HUBERT’S NOVITIATE

The small rural town of Maaseyck, on the left bank of the Maas, in the old duchy of Limburg, was the home of the Van Eycks and the birthplace of the elect of their stock, Hubert’s coming being traditionally associated with the year 1365, John’s with 1385. In the absence of documentary evidence to the contrary, these data are acceptable as founded on reasonable conjecture. There is no record of their parentage, but we know of a third brother, named Lambert, and of a kinsman, one Henry van Eyck, whose exact relationship has not been established. As the early instinct of genius revealed the true bent of the elder lad’s disposition, the outstanding advantages of a distinguished school of painting within hail almost of their doors naturally appealed to parents anxious to give effect to their son’s aspirations; so to Maastricht they turned, where the boy was duly apprenticed to one or other of its recognised masters. Having served his articles and in due course been admitted to the rank of journeyman, the youthful artist, now free to qualify for his mastership, entered upon the most interesting period of his education, a period largely spent, according to the custom of the time, in foreign travel; and it is with this stage of Hubert’s career that criticism first finds legitimate occupation.

Futile as would be the attempt to trace a definite itinerary, it is allowable to conjecture that the mother school of Coin would mark the first stage in the young artist’s travels: in the centre-piece of the great polyptych we discover in the background architectural work distinctly reminiscent of that city, and detail unmistakably Rhenish in character, testifying to a close acquaintance with the district. Evidence of similar import, such as the cathedral in the Louvre picture and the city view with a faithful presentation of Old Saint Paul’s as seen from the south in that of Baron Gustave Rothschild’s collection, on the confident assumption that these are from the brush of Hubert, bespeak visits to France and England; while the landscape work in all his paintings betrays so intimate an acquaintance with central and southern European scenery as almost to compel us into the beaten tracks of the wandering artiststudent of the time through Switzerland and the south of France, to sunny Italy and erubescent Spain. The variety of his mountain scenery — undulating hills and snow-capped peaks, rugged crags and Alpine heights; the depth of his liquid skies and spacious firmaments, with their marvellous cloud and light effects, melodies in colour that breathe the warmth of a southern sun; and the extent of his botanical lore, embracing the olive and citron, the stone pine and cypress, the date-palm and palmetto, naturalised exotics of the Mediterranean slopes — all these and other particulars too numerous to list bear the hall-mark of knowledge garnered in the observant pursuit of local colouring.

For so much there is ample warrant, and within the limits of such guarded conclusions the critic incurs little danger from the many pitfalls that beset the by-paths of deductive reasoning. But seeing that the most of our knowledge of Hubert’s life-work is arrived at by this method of inquiry, it is essential that every inference should at least stand the test of probability. To argue, for example, from the presentation of a particular palm-tree a pilgrimage to the Holy Land is to offend the laws of proportion; to discern in the picture of the walled city of Jeru- salem in „The Three Marys at the Sepulchre” work evidently „from a sketch made on the spot“ would appear more justifiable, until one is reminded of the fact that the defences of the Holy City, pulled down in 1239, were not rebuilt until 1542; but surely it is speculation run riot, in the attempt to vindicate a preconceived theory, when the simple, unobtrusive artist is made, „after the adventurous manner of his time,“ to join a crusade and journey to Palestine, seeing that the last of these gallant enterprises had taken place full seventy years before he ever saw the light of day. Without, however, incurring the reproach of outraging probability, we may apportion the usual four years of Hubert’s term of journey manship between the countries already indicated, his wanderings likely enough terminating with the visit to England before his return to the Low Countries to settle down to his life’s work as a master painter, his range of knowledge tremendously enlarged, his technique broadened and perfected in the various schools and workshops through which he had passed, his imagination fertilised, his creative powers strengthened, his faculty of utterance and expression developed — in short, fully equipped at all points to startle the world with the first-fruits of his as yet unrealised genius.