but preferred to gain experience in France. He was only at the front for a short time, for on 4 November 1916 he made a flight over the German lines and did not return. He was reported missing, and on 4 December his death was officially announced by the War Office. He had made Wrest Park, his house in Bedfordshire, a hospital for the wounded, and he offered it as a home for disabled soldiers.
Lucas gained the regard and affection of many friends. He was fond of the open air, of fishing, and of observing bird life. His endurance in active pursuits was remarkable, and he walked the roughest ground like a sound man. Quiet and thoughtful, he paid much attention to the problems of the day, and had his life been prolonged he might have made a valuable statesman. After the War broke out the excitement of flying absorbed him, and it seemed to some of those who knew him best that he fell as he would have wished. He left behind him the memory of an attractive and gallant character.
Lucas was nominated a member of the Privy Council in 1912. He never married, and his only sister, the Hon. Nan Ino Herbert (born 1880), succeeded to his titles at his death.
[The Times, 4 December 1916; Balliol College War Memorial Book, 1924.]
HERKOMER, Sir HUBERT VON (1849–1914), painter, was born 26 May 1849 at Waal, in southern Bavaria, the only son of Lorenz Herkomer, by his wife Josephine Niggl. His father, a joiner, belonged to a family of craftsmen, and all through life took a keen interest in his son, who felt that he owed a great deal to his influence; his mother was a talented musician and teacher of music. In 1851 Lorenz Herkomer emigrated with his wife and child to the United States; he returned to Europe, however, after six years, and settled at Southampton in 1857. After receiving a preliminary training in his father's workshop, Hubert Herkomer at the age of fourteen entered the Southampton school of art, proceeding, after a visit to Bavaria with his father in 1865 and a brief period of study at the Munich academy, to the South Kensington art schools in 1866. After some early struggles Herkomer had a drawing of a gipsy encampment on Wimbledon common accepted by the Graphic in 1869, and henceforth he could derive an income from working for that paper. In the same year a water-colour drawing by him, ‘Leisure Hours’, was accepted for the Royal Academy exhibition, and in 1870 he achieved a success with his water-colour, ‘Hoeing’, at an exhibition at the Dudley Gallery.
Herkomer began now gradually to make headway, his picture of a Bavarian village scene, ‘After the Toil of the Day’, being purchased for £500 at the Academy exhibition of 1873. Having rented a cottage for his parents at Bushey, Hertfordshire, he used to join them there when not at work in Chelsea. In 1874 he married Anna, daughter of Albert Weise, of Berlin. The next year he sent to the Academy his picture ‘The Last Muster—Sunday at the Royal Hospital, Chelsea’, which at once attracted very great attention. Bought by Mr. C. E. Fry, of Watford, for £1,200, this picture, which earned for Herkomer the grande medaille d'honneur at the Paris exhibition of 1878, is now in the Lady Lever 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 home which their son had acquired for them in the little Bavarian town of Landsberg am Lech, about six miles from Waal, their old home; on his wife's death in 1879 Lorenz Herkomer rejoined his son, who had meanwhile been achieving further success and in that year was elected A.R.A.
Herkomer by now had acquired a considerable position in English art life, which he developed and consolidated during the ensuing years. As a portrait painter he had a very extensive clientèle, many prominent Englishmen of the time, as well as distinguished Germans and Americans, figuring among his sitters. Of his single portraits the following are specially noteworthy: ‘Richard Wagner’ (water-colour, 1877), ‘John Ruskin’ (water-colour, 1879, National Portrait Gallery), ‘Archibald Forbes, War Correspondent’ (Royal Academy, 1882), ‘Miss Katharine Grant’ (‘The Lady in White’, 1884, Royal Academy, 1885), ‘Mrs. Sealbee, of Boston’ (‘The Lady in Black’, 1886, Leeds municipal gallery), ‘Lord Kelvin’ (1891, Royal Academy, 1892), and ‘The Marquess of Salisbury’ (1893). Herkomer made a speciality of large portrait groups, somewhat suggestive of those characteristic of seventeenth-century Holland; such are ‘The Chapel of the Charterhouse’ (Royal Academy 1889), purchased for £2,200 by the trustees of the Chantrey fund and now in the National Gallery of British Art at Millbank (Tate Gallery); two pictures of the municipal authorities of Landsberg
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