Portrait of an old man facing right
| Reference: | S42299 |
| Author | Hubert von HERKOMER |
| Year: | 1891 |
| Measures: | 125 x 160 mm |
€500.00
| Reference: | S42299 |
| Author | Hubert von HERKOMER |
| Year: | 1891 |
| Measures: | 125 x 160 mm |
€500.00
Description
Monotype or herkomergravure, 1891, signed and dated on plate at the upper right Hubert Herkomer ’91.
A fine impression, printed on contemporary wove paper, with margins, perfect condition.
“Monotype is the most direct print medium. The artist paints on a smooth, impermeable surface, places a blank piece of paper on top of the painting, and applies pressure so that the painted image is transferred onto the paper. […] Through the nineteenth century there was much ingenuity expended on finding a way for printmakers to create editions that were as painterly as monotype. Generally, inventors came up with a special compound that could be applied to the still-wet artist’s painting executed on a copper plate. When the plate was dried and electroplated, it could then be inked like an etched or engraved plate and printed again and again, providing the spontaneity of the monotype, but with the repeatability of other print media. Various inventors came up with similar processes, and by the end of the 1800s three processes were available for those wishing to make a print that had some of the visual qualities of a monotype, but could also be produced in an edition of identical prints: the galvanograph, the electrotint, and the herkomergravure, named after its inventor, Hubert Herkomer (English, 1849–1914). Herkomer was a popular painter of portraits and social genre scenes, and an inveterate experimenter in the arts. William Merritt Chase (American, 1849–1916) introduced Herkomer to the monotype process in 1885. Herkomer developed his process by 1897, but first wrote about it in 1892. It may have been in 1902 that Herkomer returned Chase’s favor by introducing him to the herkomergravure, when Chase next returned to England. The process involved smearing ink onto a copper plate and creating the image with fingers and/or brushes, as with the monotype process. Then the plate was dusted with a combination of special powders, dried, and electroplated. The resulting image was a quasi-monotype” (cfr. Andrew Stevens, American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection, pp. 3-6).
Sir Hubert von Herkomer was a German-born British artist, and also a pioneering film-director and composer. Though a very successful portraitist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor.
Bibliografia
Herkomer, Hubert. Etching and Mezzotint Engraving: Lectures Delivered at Oxford. New York: Macmillan, 1892; Andrew Stevens, American Monotypes from the Baker/Pisano Collection, Exh. Cat., by Russell Panczenko, Andrew Stevens, and D. Frederick Baker, pp. 3-6.
Hubert von HERKOMER (Waal, 26 maggio 1849 – Budleigh Salterton, 31 marzo 1914)
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Sir Hubert von Herkomer was a German-born British artist, and also a pioneering film-director and composer. Though a very successful portraitist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor. Herkomer was born at Waal, Bavaria on 26 May 1849. Lorenz Herkomer, his father and a wood-carver of great ability, left Bavaria in 1851 with his wife and child for the United States, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. They soon returned to Europe and settled in Southampton in 1857 where the family spent over 15 years before moving to a house called Dyreham in Bushey in 1874. Whilst in Southampton, Herkomer went to the school of art there and began his formal art training. He also studied in Munich, and in 1866 he entered upon a more serious course of study at the South Kensington Schools and, in 1869, exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy. In same year, he also began working as an illustrator for the newly founded newspaper The Graphic, a deliberate rival of the Illustrated London News. It was by his 1875 oil painting ‘The Last Muster’, after a wood-engraving from 1871, that he definitely established his position as an artist of high distinction at the Academy, and was elected an associate of the Academy in 1879 and an academician in 1890. He founded the Herkomer Art School at Bushey in 1883 and directed it until 1904 when he retired. During those years, it had taught more than 500 students, many of whom, such as Algernon Talmage and William Nicholson, went on to achieve distinction. Much of the success of the school can be measured by its alumni who included Lucy Kemp-Welch, George Harcourt, Tom Mostyn, E. Borough Johnson and Roland Wheelwright. Lucy Kemp-Welch took over the running of the Art School from Herkomer and ran it until 1926, first as the Bushey School of Painting and then, after relocating it to her own home, as the Kemp-Welch School of Animal Painting. After 1928 the school was run by Kemp-Welch's former assistant Marguerite Frobisher as the Frobisher School of Art. Whilst running the Art School he also exhibited a very large number of memorable portraits, figure subjects and landscapes, in oil and watercolour; he achieved marked success as a worker in enamel, as an etcher, mezzotint engraver and illustrative draughtsman, as well as exercising a wide influence upon art education. He was also a pioneering filmmaker, directing some seven historical costume dramas designed to be shown accompanied by his own music, but none of them seem to have survived. He became an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1893 and a full member in 1894, and in 1885 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, a position he held until 1894. In 1899, he was ennobled as "Ritter von Herkomer" by King Otto of Bavaria, who appointed him Knight of the Merit Order of the Bavarian Crown. The same year, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite for Arts by Kaiser Wilhelm II. On her deathbed Queen Victoria was initially photographed in study and eventually painted by Herkomer as an alternative to the more traditional mask produced in wax which her son, the incumbent Edward VII, decried. The painting, depicting the Queen as lying half-length among lilies and other flowers, swathed in white tulle, her right hand holding a cross, is part of the Royal Collection held at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, England, where it hangs in the Pavilion Principal Stairs Vestibule. Four of his pictures, Found (1885), Sir Henry Tate (1897), Portrait of Lady Tate (1899) and The Council of the Royal Academy (1908), are in the national collection at Tate. In 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's massive house in Bushey, Lululaund, named after Lulu Griffith, the second of his three wives, served as his studio, school, theatre and movie studio, where he put on productions of his own plays and musical compositions. It was designed by the prominent American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom Herkomer painted a portrait. It was designed in c.1886 and inhabited in 1894. It was demolished in 1939. Herkomer died at Budleigh Salterton, Devon on 31 March 1914 and was buried in St James's church, Bushey.
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Hubert von HERKOMER (Waal, 26 maggio 1849 – Budleigh Salterton, 31 marzo 1914)
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Sir Hubert von Herkomer was a German-born British artist, and also a pioneering film-director and composer. Though a very successful portraitist, especially of men, he is mainly remembered for his earlier works that took a realistic approach to the conditions of life of the poor. Herkomer was born at Waal, Bavaria on 26 May 1849. Lorenz Herkomer, his father and a wood-carver of great ability, left Bavaria in 1851 with his wife and child for the United States, settling in Cleveland, Ohio. They soon returned to Europe and settled in Southampton in 1857 where the family spent over 15 years before moving to a house called Dyreham in Bushey in 1874. Whilst in Southampton, Herkomer went to the school of art there and began his formal art training. He also studied in Munich, and in 1866 he entered upon a more serious course of study at the South Kensington Schools and, in 1869, exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy. In same year, he also began working as an illustrator for the newly founded newspaper The Graphic, a deliberate rival of the Illustrated London News. It was by his 1875 oil painting ‘The Last Muster’, after a wood-engraving from 1871, that he definitely established his position as an artist of high distinction at the Academy, and was elected an associate of the Academy in 1879 and an academician in 1890. He founded the Herkomer Art School at Bushey in 1883 and directed it until 1904 when he retired. During those years, it had taught more than 500 students, many of whom, such as Algernon Talmage and William Nicholson, went on to achieve distinction. Much of the success of the school can be measured by its alumni who included Lucy Kemp-Welch, George Harcourt, Tom Mostyn, E. Borough Johnson and Roland Wheelwright. Lucy Kemp-Welch took over the running of the Art School from Herkomer and ran it until 1926, first as the Bushey School of Painting and then, after relocating it to her own home, as the Kemp-Welch School of Animal Painting. After 1928 the school was run by Kemp-Welch's former assistant Marguerite Frobisher as the Frobisher School of Art. Whilst running the Art School he also exhibited a very large number of memorable portraits, figure subjects and landscapes, in oil and watercolour; he achieved marked success as a worker in enamel, as an etcher, mezzotint engraver and illustrative draughtsman, as well as exercising a wide influence upon art education. He was also a pioneering filmmaker, directing some seven historical costume dramas designed to be shown accompanied by his own music, but none of them seem to have survived. He became an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society in 1893 and a full member in 1894, and in 1885 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, a position he held until 1894. In 1899, he was ennobled as "Ritter von Herkomer" by King Otto of Bavaria, who appointed him Knight of the Merit Order of the Bavarian Crown. The same year, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite for Arts by Kaiser Wilhelm II. On her deathbed Queen Victoria was initially photographed in study and eventually painted by Herkomer as an alternative to the more traditional mask produced in wax which her son, the incumbent Edward VII, decried. The painting, depicting the Queen as lying half-length among lilies and other flowers, swathed in white tulle, her right hand holding a cross, is part of the Royal Collection held at Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, England, where it hangs in the Pavilion Principal Stairs Vestibule. Four of his pictures, Found (1885), Sir Henry Tate (1897), Portrait of Lady Tate (1899) and The Council of the Royal Academy (1908), are in the national collection at Tate. In 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's massive house in Bushey, Lululaund, named after Lulu Griffith, the second of his three wives, served as his studio, school, theatre and movie studio, where he put on productions of his own plays and musical compositions. It was designed by the prominent American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom Herkomer painted a portrait. It was designed in c.1886 and inhabited in 1894. It was demolished in 1939. Herkomer died at Budleigh Salterton, Devon on 31 March 1914 and was buried in St James's church, Bushey.
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