3-052-612 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

Associates of the Royal Academy: Mr. Hubert Herkomer, A.R.A., 1880. Engraving from a photograph by Messrs. Elliott and Fry. 'This vigorous, fertile, and versatile painter was born in 1849, at Waal, in Bavaria...at thirteen he entered the Art-School at Southampton, and won a bronze medal there...In 1866 he entered the schools at South Kensington...[In 1868] he established himself in the village of Hythe, and there painted two pictures (struggling, as he had done all along, with rare courage and perseverance against poverty and hardship), and exhibited them the next year at the Dudley Gallery. He then came to London, and occupied himself successfully with water-colour painting and designing for the wood engraver. In 1871 Mr. Herkomer was invited to join the Institute of Painters in Water Colours, and to the gallery of this society, and subsequently to the Grosvenor and the Academy, he has contributed many drawings, chiefly of Bavarian subjects, and latterly some with figures or portraits about the scale of nature...Mr. Herkomer plays what we may call his national instrument, the zither, to perfection, and claims to possess mesmeric power'. From "Illustrated London News", 1880.