Hubert Herkomer as a pioneer of artistic advertisment (MePri-News)

Hubert Herkomer (1849–1914) was a main exponent of the British social realism in the nineteenh centruy and the central artistic role model of young Vincent van Gogh. He started his  career as a special artist for the illustrated weekly The Graphic and finally ascended to the rank of a  successful  society painter.  Besides he was a pioneer of new media, experimenting with printing and enamelling techniques, with photography and film.

Hubert Herkomer as the leading actor in his film „ A Highwayman´s Honour“, Bushey 1914 (reproduced in: Lee MacCormick Edwards, Herkomer. A Victorian Artist, Aldershot  1999 )

In her article for the NCAW- journal “The Streets as Art Galleries”: Hubert Herkomer, William Powell Frith, and the Artistic Advertisement, Andrea Korda focuses on Herkomer as a pioneer of demanding pictorial advertising. In 1881, a decade before a craze for artistic poster design spread across Europe with the Art Nouveau movement, Herkomer began a campaign to reform advertising by publishing a poster and an accompanying article promoting The Streets as Art Galleries: “Herkomer’s proposal (…) was not only to put artists in charge of poster design, but also to re-make advertising as a high art by drawing on academic conventions and the rarefied vocabulary of the fine arts.” (Andrea Korda)

Hubert Herkomer, Design for a Poster, 1881 (reproduced in: Andrea Korda, “The Streets as Art Galleries”: Hubert Herkomer, William Powell Frith, and the Artistic Advertisement , 2012)