to Antwerp in a cattle boat ... And never shall I forget the miseries of that voyage. And then there were the railway carriages on the other side. We were compelled to travel fourth-class, in the company of people who were no less filthy than the carriages; and I remember..... I swore a big oath that if ever I had any money I would travel in the most luxurious style possible. I have never forgotten that oath". Herkomer and his father led a hard life while in Munich, but he stated that "they were very happy days" and his father sat as model for him during that time. In 1866, Herkomer began a more serious course of study at the South Kensington Schools. Career In 1869 Herkomer exhibited for the first time at the Royal Academy of Arts and sold his first picture for two guineas. Also in 1869, he began working as an illustrator for the newly founded newspaper The Graphic, a rival of the Illustrated London News. On 10 January 1872, Herkomer was naturalized as a British subject. Then aged 22 and living at 32, Smith Street, Chelsea, he was described as an unmarried artist. His oath of allegiance to Queen Victoria was witnessed by Sir Sills John Gibbons, Lord Mayor of London. In 1873, Herkomer visited a friend who lived in Bushey, Hertfordshire, and the next year he rented a pair of cottages there called Dyreham and a studio near Melbourne Road, Bushey. By the time he was twenty-four, he had sold a painting for five hundred pounds. It was by his oil painting The Last Muster (1875), after a wood-engraving of 1871, that he established his position as an artist of high distinction at the Royal Academy. Another early notable work is his Eventide: A Scene in the Westminster Union (1878). In 1879 he was elected an associate of the Royal Academy. In 1884, a full-page caricature of Herkomer by FG (his friend Franz Goedecker) appeared in Vanity Fair, captioned "Painter, Sculptor, Blacksmith &c". In the same year, he established an Art School at Bushey which he continued until 1904, attracting many students. In 1885 he was appointed Slade Professor of Fine Art at the University of Oxford, a position he held until 1894. He was the first president of the Oxford Art Society, established in 1891. In 1890 Herkomer was elected a Royal Academician, in