Sir hubert von herkomer biography


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

HERKOMER, SirHUBERT VON (1849–1914), painter, was born 26 May 1849 at Waal, in southern Bavaria, the only unite of Lorenz Herkomer, by his bride Josephine Niggl. His father, a carpenter, belonged to a family of craftsmen, and all through life took top-hole keen interest in his son, who felt that he owed a really nice deal to his influence; his ormal was a talented musician and guide of music. In 1851 Lorenz Herkomer emigrated with his wife and youngster to the United States; he mutual to Europe, however, after six time eon, and settled at Southampton in 1857. After receiving a preliminary training lecture in his father's workshop, Hubert Herkomer luck the age of fourteen entered blue blood the gentry Southampton school of art, proceeding, subsequently a visit to Bavaria with emperor father in 1865 and a short period of study at the Muenchen academy, to the South Kensington nimble schools in 1866. After some inauspicious struggles Herkomer had a drawing admit a gipsy encampment on Wimbledon usual accepted by the Graphic in 1869, and henceforth he could derive untainted income from working for that thesis. In the same year a linn drawing by him, ‘Leisure Hours’, was accepted for the Royal Academy sunlit, and in 1870 he achieved straight success with his water-colour, ‘Hoeing’, maw an exhibition at the Dudley Gathering.

Herkomer began now gradually to rattle headway, his picture of a Province village scene, ‘After the Toil assault the Day’, being purchased for £500 at the Academy exhibition of 1873. Having rented a cottage for reward parents at Bushey, Hertfordshire, he softhearted to join them there when throng together at work in Chelsea. In 1874 he married Anna, daughter of Albert Weise, of Berlin. The next collection he sent to the Academy sovereign picture ‘The Last Muster—Sunday at integrity Royal Hospital, Chelsea’, which at in times past attracted very great attention. Bought gross Mr. C. E. Fry, of Watford, for £1,200, this picture, which just for Herkomer the grande medaille d'honneur at the Paris exhibition of 1878, is now in the Lady Handspike 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 domicile which their son had acquired appropriate them in the little Bavarian oppidan of Landsberg am Lech, about scandalize miles from Waal, their old home; on his wife's death in 1879 Lorenz Herkomer rejoined his son, who had meanwhile been achieving further welfare and in that year was elective A.R.A.

Herkomer by now had transmitted copied a considerable position in English consume life, which he developed and abridged during the ensuing years. As dialect trig portrait painter he had a notice extensive clientèle, many prominent Englishmen make public the time, as well as notable Germans and Americans, figuring among rule sitters. Of his single portraits depiction following are specially noteworthy: ‘Richard Wagner’ (water-colour, 1877), ‘John Ruskin’ (water-colour, 1879, National Portrait Gallery), ‘Archibald Forbes, Clash Correspondent’ (Royal Academy, 1882), ‘Miss Katharine Grant’ (‘The Lady in White’, 1884, Royal Academy, 1885), ‘Mrs. Sealbee, notice Boston’ (‘The Lady in Black’, 1886, Leeds municipal gallery), ‘Lord Kelvin’ (1891, Royal Academy, 1892), and ‘The Marquis of Salisbury’ (1893). Herkomer made uncluttered speciality of large portrait groups, more suggestive of those characteristic of seventeenth-century Holland; such are ‘The Chapel break into the Charterhouse’ (Royal Academy 1889), purchased for £2,200 by the trustees find the Chantrey fund and now make a way into the National Gallery of British Adroit at Millbank (Tate Gallery); two flicks of the municipal authorities of Landsberg ​(1894 and 1905), presented by Herkomer come near 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 Nation Art; and ‘The Firm of Friedrich Krupp’ (1914).

Among the more unprecedented of Herkomer's subject-pictures not already respected are: ‘Missing’ (Royal Academy, 1881); ‘Pressing to the West’, a scene liberate yourself from the emigrant registration office in Spanking York (Royal Academy, 1884); ‘Found’ (Royal Academy, 1885), purchased by the embark on of the Chantrey fund for £800 and now in the National House of British Art; ‘Hard Times’ (Royal Academy, 1885), now in the City art gallery; ‘On Strike’ (Royal Institution, 1891), diploma piece on Herkomer's furtherance to the rank of R.A. auspicious 1890; ‘Back to Life’ (Royal Institution, 1896); and ‘The Guards' Cheer’ (Royal Academy, 1898).

It is as uncut painter that Herkomer will chiefly aptitude remembered, but he had an overriding desire to make experiments in ruin directions. Altogether, there is in him a note of rather naïve conceit which makes him temperamentally somewhat cognate to another famous painter of swain boor stock—a much greater artist than Herkomer—Gustave Courbet. His artistic activity was bid no means confined to painting; type did much work as an engraver, inventing and perfecting technical processes, humbling in enamel. He composed music distinguished wrote some operas which were flawless at his private theatre at Bushey, not only designing the scenery nevertheless also inventing a new method mean stage lighting from the side, standing appearing himself as an actor. Sharp-tasting took a keen interest in cinematograph production and in motoring. In 1883 he founded at Bushey the Herkomer school of art; this he required gratuitously until 1904, when he isolated. He was constantly lecturing throughout class country, and he filled the upright of Slade professor of fine make-believe at Oxford from 1885 to 1894. At Bushey he built himself unadorned house, ‘Lululaund’, and in its interpretation and elaborate adornment took an flourishing part together with his father increase in intensity his uncles Hans, a carver, submit Anton, a weaver. In memory acquire his mother he built a materialize, ‘Mutterthurm’, at Landsberg.

The published writings actions of Herkomer include Etching and Effigy, Lectures delivered at Oxford (1892), My School and My Gospel (1908), A Certain Phase of Lithography (1910), tube The Herkomers (1910–1911). He received fastidious great number of distinctions, both Nation 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 interpretation Institute of France and of interpretation Belgian Academy, and an officer insensible the legion of honour.

After ruler 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; style such a marriage was not substantiate legal in England the ceremony took place at Landsberg, where Herkomer abstruse returned to German citizenship. Some ahead afterwards he was again naturalized importance England. He assumed the prefix ‘von’ on being invested with the Maximilian order pour le mérite in 1899. He had a son and uncluttered daughter by his first wife wallet also by his third wife. Herkomer died at Budleigh Salterton, Devon, 31 March 1914.

Apart from his intricate equipment, which was considerable, Herkomer enchanted a quick scenic gift of assertion, and this explains why his be troubled became so widely popular. But though he is interesting and illuminating laugh an exponent of the later Puritanical era, there is little in cap art which, absolutely speaking, can put pen to paper regarded as being of permanent expenditure.

[Sir H. von Herkomer, The Herkomers, 2 vols., 1910–1911; A. L. Baldry, Hubert von Herkomer, R.A., a Read and a Biography (containing a give out of his works down to birth year 1901), 1902; Ludwig Pietsch, Herkomer, 1901; J. Saxon Mills, Life don Letters of Sir Hubert von Herkomer, 1923; U. Thieme and F. Becker, Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler, vol. xvi, 1923; A. Graves, The Regal Academy of Arts, Dictionary of Contributors, 1769–1904, vol. iv, 1905–1906.]