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Mulliner’s Dutch Masters Collection Blends Art History With Horsepower

Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has held its share of masterpieces, but it’s not every day that three one-off Bentleys take their place among Rembrandt, Vermeer, and Van Gogh. At a special event hosted in the museum’s Gallery of Honour, Bentley and its bespoke division, Mulliner, unveiled the Dutch Masters Collection—a trio of Continental GTs that reinterpret the palettes, textures, and symbolism of iconic Dutch art.

More than 200 guests from Bentley’s Dutch dealerships gathered first for a virtual reveal, then for an evening inside the country’s most revered art space—an appropriately dramatic backdrop for cars that blur the line between coachbuilding and canvas.

Car 01: Rembrandt’s “Night Watch” Reimagined

Rembrandt’s 1642 Night Watch never lacked drama, and neither does Mulliner’s corresponding Continental GT Convertible. Draped in Midnight Emerald, the car picks up the painting’s deep shadows, while its interior splashes of Hotspur red riff on Captain Frans Banninck Cocq’s famous sash. A combination of Magnolia and Cumbrian green hides softens the cabin, echoing the lieutenant’s coat and the painting’s muted tones.

Gold organ stops add a subtle baroque flourish, but the real showpiece comes when the door opens at night: an illuminated animation of a floating feather—an Easter egg nodding to the lieutenant’s hat in the center of the canvas. Feather motifs continue across the door cards, set against Dutch Masters badging that reminds you this Bentley is not just a car, but a one-off piece of rolling art.

Car 02: Vermeer’s Light, Captured in Metal and Leather

Few artists command light the way Johannes Vermeer did, and Mulliner’s Vermeer-inspired Continental GT aims to distill that luminance into automotive form. The exterior’s Sapphire satin finish immediately sets a different tone—cool, reflective, almost Delft-like in its purity. A panoramic sunroof ensures daylight floods the cabin just as Vermeer did with his window-lit interiors.

Inside, Beluga and Ocean blue hides establish a calm foundation, broken up by daring flashes of Citric yellow and seat piping in Klein blue. Mulliner looked to Vermeer’s The Little Street for the welcome lamp animation and door card imagery, capturing its rolling clouds with surprising delicacy. The Bentley Rotating Display even receives a hand-painted inner ring and a Klein blue bezel—small touches that elevate the whole car from homage to interpretation.

Car 03: Van Gogh’s “Starry Night,” Now in Dark Sapphire and Khamun

If Rembrandt delivered gravitas and Vermeer contributed serenity, then Vincent van Gogh brings emotion—turbulent, color-charged, and unmistakably expressive. Mulliner’s third entry, a Continental GT in Dark Sapphire with Khamun yellow pinstriping, channels the whirling sky of The Starry Night without resorting to mere imitation.

The interior leans heavily on Imperial blue, Dark Sapphire, Linen, and Khamun, a near-direct translation of Van Gogh’s Post-Impressionist palette. Illuminated welcome lamps and etched door panels recreate the painting’s swirling sky, while a dual-finish Piano Linen veneer bisected by a hand-painted Dark Sapphire pinstripe anchors the theme. Open-pore chiselled Walnut across the center console and gold knurled organ stops finish the look with texture and warmth—Van Gogh through a luxury lens.

The Art, Beyond the Cars

Each Dutch Masters Bentley comes with a bespoke presentation key box trimmed in its car’s hides. Open it, and you’ll find laser-etched artwork—feather, clouds, or starry sky—on the inner lid. Mechanically, all three cars share Blackline and Touring specifications, body-colored styling kits, wellness seating, mood lighting, the Bentley Rotating Display, and a Naim for Bentley audio system. In other words: they’re as modern and technologically complete as any Continental GT, just dressed with a level of artistic intention rarely seen in automotive design.

Art Meets Engineering—Literally

Most manufacturers love calling their cars “works of art.” Mulliner’s Dutch Masters Collection is one of the few times that claim holds up to scrutiny. These Continentals don’t merely borrow color palettes—they translate light, iconography, and mood. They’re reinterpretations of three world-famous masterpieces, crafted not for galleries, but for the open road.

And inside the Rijksmuseum, surrounded by centuries of history, these Bentleys didn’t look out of place. That might just be the highest compliment an automotive designer can hope for.

Source: Bentley

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Bentley Turns Light Into Luxury: The Futuristic Craft Behind Mulliner’s Animated Welcome Lamps

For more than a century, Bentley has defined luxury with wood so polished you can see the future in it, leather so supple it could pass for a tailored suit, and metalwork fit for a fine Swiss chronometer. But now, the Crewe craftsmen have added a surprising new medium to their palette: light.

And not just any light — curated, animated, digitally sculpted light.

Originally developed for the ultra-exclusive Mulliner Batur, Bentley’s first-ever use of Digital Light Processing (DLP) in a road car is now making its way into the brand’s broader coachbuilt offerings. The result? Customers can design their own animated welcome projection — a personal light show that appears on the ground as they open the door. Think of it as the automotive equivalent of a signature handshake, crafted from photons.

Light as Luxury Material

Bentley calls the concept “digital craftsmanship,” and for once, the marketing speak undersells it. What the brand is doing here is redefining how technology and traditional coachbuilding can intersect.

Every projection features a two-part animation:

  • An intro sequence triggered when the door first swings open
  • A continuous loop that plays afterward

Bentley’s designers aren’t just sketching pretty patterns — they’re pulling motifs from the cabin and exterior and giving them motion. Embroidered feathers can flutter to life. Initials can sweep across the pavement in a handwritten flourish. Even bespoke themes can be crafted for special commissions.

Case in point: a recent Mulliner collection inspired by the Romanian Athenaeum in Bucharest. The headrest embroidery and dashboard’s musical cues became the backbone of an animation featuring warm central light surrounded by swirling musical notes — a bit of nighttime theatre every time you step inside.

Microscopic Mirrors, Massive Impact

If this all sounds like projector tech, that’s because it is — extremely advanced projector tech.

Bentley’s system uses three colored light sources that pass through five lenses and two prisms before striking a tiny 8 mm² Digital Micromirror Device (DMD™). This silicon chip contains 415,800 mirrors, each only 16 microns wide — roughly one-fifth the width of a human hair.

These mirrors can tilt thousands of times per second. When they’re “on,” they reflect colored light out toward the ground. When “off,” they aim light into a heat sink so the image stays razor-sharp. Each mirror is a pixel, and together they form animations detailed enough to match the rest of the car’s handcrafted identity.

If luxury used to rely on rare materials, Bentley argues the next frontier is mastering how those materials behave in motion.

The Future: Where Craft Meets Code

Bentley’s designers are already exploring how far this idea can go. What happens when lighting, interior design, and UI all merge into one cohesive artistic language? What if the emotional resonance customers expect from woodgrain or leather stitching could also come from curated moments of digital animation?

This isn’t about more screens or brighter LEDs; it’s about using technology to amplify the emotional signature of a Bentley. A new kind of luxury — less about physical mass, more about sensory experience.

And while animated welcome lamps might seem like a small flourish, they hint at something bigger: a future where the line between coachbuilding and coding gets beautifully blurred.

Bentley built its reputation on craftsmanship you can feel. Now it’s working on craftsmanship you can see — even before you step inside.

Source: Bentley

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Bentley Flying Spur Gets a Paintjob Picasso Would Applaud

You know how some people fade into the background? The Bentley Flying Spur does the exact opposite. Crewe’s artisans have gone full Renaissance painter with something they call “Ombré by Mulliner” – a paint finish that looks less like a car colour and more like Bentley hired Monet to airbrush the bodywork.

For the first time, Bentley’s four-door limousine has been dressed in this two-tone sorcery: a Topaz Blue nose melting into a Windsor Blue tail. The fade isn’t some lazy Photoshop filter either – it’s done entirely by hand, in the Bentley Dream Factory, by people with steadier wrists than a bomb disposal expert.

How steady? Well, the process takes 60 hours and two highly skilled paint techs, who spray, pause, blend, and basically dance around the Flying Spur like it’s a priceless canvas. The trick is keeping the transition perfectly symmetrical across the doors, sills, and roof. Any wobble, and you’ve just turned a £200,000 luxury saloon into an expensive tie-dye experiment.

Bentley isn’t stopping at blues either. Oh no. Mulliner’s paint alchemists have also cooked up Sunburst Gold to Orange Flame and Tungsten to Onyx. What you won’t see is any daft yellow-to-blue mash-up that accidentally produces green. This isn’t a primary-school art class – Bentley has curated the colour combos to avoid awkward halfway hues.

And here’s the thing: no two cars will ever look exactly alike. Each application is a one-off, depending on how the paints react in the moment. Think of it as automotive jazz – improvised, but always on key.

The first Ombré creation, a Continental GT, made its debut under the Californian sun at Monterey Car Week. Now the Flying Spur gets its turn in the spotlight, taking a bow at the Southampton International Boat Show. Boats, Bentleys, and blues that fade smoother than a Sinatra outro.

Bentley promises more colour combinations are on the horizon. Until then, the Flying Spur Ombré is the new benchmark in making every other luxury car in the marina car park look like it’s wearing off-the-peg paint.

Source: Bentley