1893 an associate of the Royal Watercolour Society, and the next year a full member. At Bushey, Herkomer built a large house, Lululaund, named after Lulu Griffith, the second of his three wives, in a heavily German style, designed about 1886 by the American architect Henry Hobson Richardson, for whom he painted a portrait. This house was completed in 1894 and thereafter served as studio and school. It contained a theatre, where Herkomer put on productions of his own plays and musical compositions and also made films. In 1899, King Otto of Bavaria ennobled Herkomer as "Ritter von Herkomer" and as a Knight of the Merit Order of the Bavarian Crown. The same year, he was awarded the Pour le Mérite award for the arts by the Emperor of Germany. On her deathbed, in 1901, 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 new king Edward VII, decried. The painting, showing the Queen 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, where it hangs in the Pavilion Principal Stairs Vestibule. In 1907, Herkomer was knighted by King Edward VII. Herkomer exhibited a large number of memorable portraits, figure subjects, and landscapes, both in oil and watercolour; he achieved marked success as a worker in enamel, as an etcher, a mezzotint engraver, and an illustrative draughtsman 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. It was voluntarily wound up in 1926 having been run up to that time by his former pupil, Lucy Kemp-Welch. It is now defunct. Despite being a prominent member of Royal Academy of Arts, Royal Watercolour Society, and Royal Society of Painter-Etchers, as well as being on familiar terms with the royal family, Herkomer was never totally accepted by the British establishment, as he was ultimately a victim of the deteriorating relationship between Great Britain and Germany, which he shuttled between, spending most of his summers in Bavaria. Four of his pictures, Found (1885), Sir Henry Tate (1897), Portrait of Lady Tate (1899) and The Council of the Royal Academy (1908),