46 State of Fainting from the Reign of 



tiires I have mentioned as ftill extant and 

 under all the appearances of being paint- 

 ed in oil, feeiTi to fay even more. The 

 Painters employed by Henry III. appear 

 to have been Italians, and yet it is cafy 

 to vindicate the fecret from them, at leaft 

 I can prove that they muft have found 

 tlie praflice here, not have brought it 



is an old altar-table at Chifvvick, reprefentlng the lord 

 Clifford and his lady kneeling. — Van Eyck*s name is 

 burnt in on the back of the board. If Van Eyck was 

 ever in England, would it not be probable that he 

 learned the fecret of ufing oil here, and took the ho- 

 nour of the invention to himfelf, as we were then a 

 country little known to the world of arts, nor at leifure 

 enough, from the confufions of the times, to claim the 

 difcovery of a fecret which foon made fuch fortune 

 abroad ? An additional prefumption, though certainly 

 not a proof of Van Eyck's being in England, is a pic- 

 ture in the duke of Devonfhire's colle(5lion painted by 

 John ab Eyck in 1422, and reprefentlng the confecra- 

 tion of St. Thomas Becket. The tradition is, that it wa« 

 a prefent to Henry V. from his uncle the duke of Bed- 

 ford, regent of France ; but tradition is no proof ; and 

 tu'o pidures of this author in England, one of them of an 

 Englifh family, and the other of an English ftory, are at 

 leaft as good evidence for his having been here, as tra- 

 dition for one of them being painted abroad. However 

 I pretend to nothing more in all this than mere con- 

 je<^uic, 



over 



