# Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Herkomer, Hubert Von

​HERKOMER, Sir HUBERT VON (1849–1914), painter, was born 26 May 1849 at Waal, in southern Bavaria, the only son of Lorenz Herkomer, by his wife Josephine Niggl. His father, a joiner, belonged to a family of craftsmen, and all through life took a keen interest in his son, who felt that he owed a great deal to his influence; his mother was a talented musician and teacher of music. In 1851 Lorenz Herkomer emigrated with his wife and child to the United States; he returned to Europe, however, after six years, and settled at Southampton in 1857. After receiving a preliminary training in his father's workshop, Hubert Herkomer at the age of fourteen entered the Southampton school of art, proceeding, after a visit to Bavaria with his father in 1865 and a brief period of study at the Munich academy, to the South Kensington art schools in 1866. After some early struggles Herkomer had a drawing of a gipsy encampment on Wimbledon common accepted by the Graphic in 1869, and henceforth he could derive an income from working for that paper. In the same year a water-colour drawing by him, ‘Leisure Hours’, was accepted for the Royal Academy exhibition, and in 1870 he achieved a success with his water-colour, ‘Hoeing’, at an exhibition at the Dudley Gallery.
Herkomer began now gradually to make headway, his picture of a Bavarian village scene, ‘After the Toil of the Day’, being purchased for £500 at the Academy exhibition of 1873. Having rented a cottage for his parents at Bushey, Hertfordshire, he used to join them there when not at work in Chelsea. In 1874 he married Anna, daughter of Albert Weise, of Berlin. The next year he sent to the Academy his picture ‘The Last Muster—Sunday at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea’, which at once attracted very great attention. Bought by Mr. C. E. Fry, of Watford, for £1,200, this picture, which earned for Herkomer the grande medaille d'honneur at the Paris exhibition of 1878, is now in the Lady Lever art gallery at Port Sunlight, Cheshire, having been purchased for 2,800 guineas at the Quilter sale in 1923. Shortly after this great success Herkomer's parents settled in the new home which their son had acquired for them in the little Bavarian town of Landsberg am Lech, about six miles from Waal, their old home; on his wife's death in 1879 Lorenz Herkomer rejoined his son, who had meanwhile been achieving further success and in that year was elected A.R.A.
Herkomer by now had acquired a considerable position in English art life, which he developed and consolidated during the ensuing years. As a portrait painter he had a very extensive clientèle, many prominent Englishmen of the time, as well as distinguished Germans and Americans, figuring among his sitters. Of his single portraits the following are specially noteworthy: ‘Richard Wagner’ (water-colour, 1877), ‘John Ruskin’ (water-colour, 1879, National Portrait Gallery), ‘Archibald Forbes, War Correspondent’ (Royal Academy, 1882), ‘Miss Katharine Grant’ (‘The Lady in White’, 1884, Royal Academy, 1885), ‘Mrs. Sealbee, of Boston’ (‘The Lady in Black’, 1886, Leeds municipal gallery), ‘Lord Kelvin’ (1891, Royal Academy, 1892), and ‘The Marquess of Salisbury’ (1893). Herkomer made a speciality of large portrait groups, somewhat suggestive of those characteristic of seventeenth-century Holland; such are ‘The Chapel of the Charterhouse’ (Royal Academy 1889), purchased for £2,200 by the trustees of the Chantrey fund and now in the National Gallery of British Art at Millbank (Tate Gallery); two pictures of the municipal authorities of Landsberg ​(1894 and 1905), presented by Herkomer to the town hall of Landsberg; ‘A Board of Directors’ (Royal Academy, 1892); ‘The Council of the Royal Academy’ (Royal Academy, 1908), presented by Herkomer to the National Gallery of British Art; and ‘The Firm of Friedrich Krupp’ (1914).
Among the more remarkable of Herkomer's subject-pictures not already noted are: ‘Missing’ (Royal Academy, 1881); ‘Pressing to the West’, a scene from the emigrant registration office in New York (Royal Academy, 1884); ‘Found’ (Royal Academy, 1885), purchased by the trustees of the Chantrey fund for £800 and now in the National Gallery of British Art; ‘Hard Times’ (Royal Academy, 1885), now in the Manchester art gallery; ‘On Strike’ (Royal Academy, 1891), diploma piece on Herkomer's promotion to the rank of R.A. in 1890; ‘Back to Life’ (Royal Academy, 1896); and ‘The Guards' Cheer’ (Royal Academy, 1898).
It is as a painter that Herkomer will chiefly be remembered, but he had an irresistible desire to make experiments in other directions. Altogether, there is in him a note of rather naïve egotism which makes him temperamentally somewhat akin to another famous painter of peasant stock—a much greater artist than Herkomer—Gustave Courbet. His artistic activity was by no means confined to painting; he did much work as an engraver, inventing and perfecting technical processes, and in enamel. He composed music and wrote some operas which were performed at his private theatre at Bushey, not only designing the scenery but also inventing a new method of stage lighting from the side, and appearing himself as an actor. He took a keen interest in cinematograph production and in motoring. In 1883 he founded at Bushey the Herkomer school of art; this he directed gratuitously until 1904, when he retired. He was constantly lecturing throughout the country, and he filled the post of Slade professor of fine art at Oxford from 1885 to 1894. At Bushey he built himself a house, ‘Lululaund’, and in its construction and elaborate adornment took an active part together with his father and his uncles Hans, a carver, and Anton, a weaver. In memory of his mother he built a tower, ‘Mutterthurm’, at Landsberg.
The published works of Herkomer include Etching and Engraving, Lectures delivered at Oxford (1892), My School and My Gospel (1908), A Certain Phase of Lithography (1910), and The Herkomers (1910–1911). He received a great number of distinctions, both English and foreign: he was created C.V.O. in 1901 and knighted in 1907; he held many honorary degrees, was an honorary fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an associate of the Institute of France and of the Belgian Academy, and an officer of the legion of honour.
After his first wife's death in 1883 Herkomer married in 1884 Miss Lulu Griffiths (died 1885), of Stanley House, Ruthin. He married thirdly, in 1888, Margaret, sister of his second wife; as such a marriage was not then legal in England the ceremony took place at Landsberg, where Herkomer had returned to German citizenship. Some time afterwards he was again naturalized in England. He assumed the prefix ‘von’ on being invested with the Maximilian order pour le mérite in 1899. He had a son and a daughter by his first wife and also by his third wife. Herkomer died at Budleigh Salterton, Devon, 31 March 1914.
Apart from his technical equipment, which was considerable, Herkomer possessed a quick scenic gift of expression, and this explains why his work became so widely popular. But although he is interesting and illuminating as an exponent of the later Victorian era, there is little in his art which, absolutely speaking, can be regarded as being of permanent value.
[Sir H. von Herkomer, The Herkomers, 2 vols., 1910–1911; A. L. Baldry, Hubert von Herkomer, R.A., a Study and a Biography (containing a list of his works down to the year 1901), 1902; Ludwig Pietsch, Herkomer, 1901; J. Saxon Mills, Life and Letters of Sir Hubert von Herkomer, 1923; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. xvi, 1923; A. Graves, The Royal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributors, 1769–1904, vol. iv, 1905–1906.]
T. B.