Margaret, the Artist's Wife

Margaret van Eyck is expensively dressed in a red gown lined with grey fur, which has been gathered into a green belt woven with a pattern.  Her extravagantly fluted veil is made of a single length of folded linen.

The inscription on the lower edge of the original painted frame gives her age (33 years) and van Eyck’s own motto ‘Als ik kan’. This is probably a pun on his name:  ‘as I or Eyck can’. The same motto appears on the National Gallery’s self portrait.

The inscription on top of the frame reads: ‘My husband Jan completed me on 15 June 1439’. The effect is as if the portrait speaks directly to the viewer.  The reverse of the portrait is painted to imitate red stone.

Margaret, who died after 1456, may have run her husband’s workshop for several years after his death in 1441. She also had a pension from the town of Bruges, which she risked one year in the civic lottery. This portrait was later kept with another, perhaps a self-portrait by Margaret’s husband, just conceivably the National Gallery’s own picture.

The painting was lent to the National Gallery London by the Groeningemuseum in Bruges for the Renaissance Faces exhibition which took place from15 October 2008 – 18 January 2009.

Following the exhibition and at the request of the Groeningemuseum the painting has stayed at the National Gallery for conservation and for scientific analysis. The results of this work will be published online in the near future (in the research section).

The painting is on display in Room 56 until December 2009