Artist and film pioneer, born in Waal, S Germany. He studied art at Southampton, Munich, and the College of Art in South Kensington, and in 1870 settled in London. As well as painting, he worked as an engraver, wood-carver, ironsmith, architect, journalist, playwright, composer, singer, and actor. He was also a pioneer producer/director of British silent films, with his own studio at Bushey, Hertfordshire. He later became professor of fine art at Oxford (188994). His portrait paintings included those of Wagner, Ruskin, and Lord Kelvin. He was knighted in 1907.
Sir Hubert von Herkomer (1849 - 1914), British painter, was born at Waal, in Bavaria, and eight years later was brought to England by his father, a wood-carver of great ability.
He lived for some time at Southampton and in the school of art there began his art training; In 1869 he also began working as an artist for a newly-founded newspaper called The Graphic. By his picture, The Last Muster, at the Academy in 1875, he definitely established his position as an artist of high distinction.
He exhibited a very large number of memorable portraits, figure subjects and landscapes, in oil and watercolour; and he exercised wide influence upon art education by means of the Herkomer School (Incorporated), at Bushey, which he founded in 1883 and directed without payment until 1904, when he retired. Herkomer's massive house, Lululaund, served as his studio, school and even theatre, where he put on productions of his own plays and musical compositions.
Two of his pictures, Found (1885) and The Chapel of the Charterhouse (1889), are in the Tate Gallery. In the year 1907 he received the honorary degree of DCL at Oxford, and a knighthood was conferred upon him by the king in addition to the commandership of the Royal Victorian Order with which he was already decorated.
Herkomer was also a pioneering film maker.
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