Sir Hubert von Herkomer
Born Waal, Bavaria, 26 May 1849; died Budleigh Salterton, Devon, 31 March 1914.
English painter, illustrator, printmaker, stage designer, film maker, writer and teacher of German birth. He was the only child of Lorenz Herkomer (d 1887), a wood-carver, and Josephine (née Niggl), an accomplished pianist and music teacher. They left Bavaria for the USA in 1851 and lived briefly in Cleveland, OH, before settling in Southampton, England, in 1857.
Herkomer received his first art instruction from his father and from 1864 to 1865 he attended the Southampton School of Art. Later he often criticized the crippling academic methods to which he was exposed as a student. In 1865 he briefly attended the Munich Academy and spent the summer terms of 1866 and 1867 at the South Kensington Art School in London, where he found the teaching ‘aimless and undirected’. With the encouragement of his fellow student Luke Fildes, Herkomer took up black-and-white illustration; his first wood-engraving appeared in Good Words in November 1869, and in 1870 his illustrations, which often depicted poverty and distress, began to appear regularly in the Graphic. These animated and expressive engravings profoundly influenced the art of van Gogh, who collected them and frequently mentioned Herkomer’s work in his letters.
Herkomer exhibited annually at the Royal Academy, London, from 1869. The Last Muster: Sunday at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea (exh. RA 1875; Port Sunlight, Lady Lever A.G.) is based on his wood-engraving which had appeared in the Graphic (18 Feb 1871) as Sunday at Chelsea Hospital. Its depiction of a group of Chelsea pensioners seated at a service in the Chelsea Hospital chapel was admired for its touching motif and boldly realistic style. The painting was phenomenally successful and assured the artist a lasting fame.
Herkomer painted a number of pictures that revealed his sympathy for the poor and disadvantaged, a characteristic fostered in part by his own humble origins. Among them are Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union (exh. RA 1878; Liverpool, Walker A.G.), which depicted elderly women in a workhouse; Hard Times (exh. RA 1885; Manchester, C.A.G.), which showed an unemployed worker and his family; and his diploma picture On Strike (exh. RA 1891; London, RA). The impact of these images is heightened by looming foreground figures and an exaggerated perspective. A stylistically inconsistent painter, Herkomer oscillated between the delicate idealism of Frederick Walker (whom he greatly admired) and his own more vigorous and idiosyncratic style influenced by contemporary German realism.
Herkomer also exhibited landscapes and Bavarian peasant scenes. From 1871 he spent several months of almost every year in Germany, living there after 1885 in his own house, the Mutterturm (Landsberg-am-Lech, Bavaria), built in memory of his mother. His reputation in Germany was assured by frequent exhibitions of his work there and by numerous portrait commissions from prominent academics, businessmen and members of the nobility, for example HRH Prince Luitpold Regent of Bavaria (1895; Munich, Neue Pin.). He also painted two huge group portraits of town council members for the Landsberg Rathaus (1891, 1905). In 1899 William II awarded Herkomer the Order of Merit, which entitled him to add the prefix ‘von’ to his name.
Although Herkomer continued to exhibit genre subjects throughout his career, the principal focus of his painting after 1880 was portraiture. His sitters consistently comprised the most distinguished figures of his day, his most notable portraits including those of John Ruskin (1879; London, N.P.G.), Archibald Forbes (exh. RA 1882; Hamburg, Ksthalle) and Thomas Hawksley (1887; London, N.P.G.). Herkomer was elected ARA in 1879 and RA in 1890. The financial rewards of portrait painting enabled him to build a castle residence, Lululaund (1894; destr. 1939), in Bushey, Herts, named in memory of his second wife, Lulu. Its Romanesque exterior was designed by the American architect H. H. Richardson, one of his friends.
A controversial figure because of his outspoken enthusiasm and no-nonsense personality, Herkomer was often in the public eye through his lecturing, writing and other interests. He continually experimented with engraving techniques, publishing two books on the subject, as well as working with enamel and ivory. He wrote plays and musical diversions, performing in them at the Herkomer Theatre in Bushey. His innovative set designs and stage-lighting concepts influenced the stage-craft of Edwin Gordon Craig, who acknowledged his debt to Herkomer’s theatre experiments. A pioneer of the British film industry, he made and appeared in several films from 1912 to 1914. His art school at Bushey, which flourished from 1883 to 1904, drew students from Sweden, South Africa, America and Australia, most notably William Nicholson. His gifts as a teacher were further acknowledged when he succeeded Ruskin as Slade Professor of Fine Arts (1885–94) at Oxford University. Herkomer received many public honours, among them a knighthood in 1907.
Lee M. Edwards. "Herkomer, Hubert von." In Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online, http://www.oxfordartonline.com.proxy.lib.fsu.edu/subscriber/article/grove/art/T037756 (accessed May 1, 2012).
