The Last Muster

The Last Muster is an 1875 oil painting by Sir Hubert von Herkomer, based on his wood engraving Sunday at the Chelsea Hospital published in The Graphic on 18 February 1871.

It was a critical and popular success, and a barrier was erected to protect it from the thronging crowd, the fourth time the rare honour had been accorded in four years: it was needed in 1874 for Luke Fildes's Applicants for Admission to a Casual Ward and Lady Butler's The Roll Call, and in 1871 for William Powell Frith's The Salon d'Or, Homburg.

Previous examples include Frith's The Derby Day in 1858 and David Wilkie's Chelsea Pensioners reading the Waterloo Dispatch in 1822.

It won a gold Medaille d'Honneur at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1878: the only other English painter similarly recognised at the exhibition was John Everett Millais.

Herkomer was made a chevalier of the légion d'honneur in 1879, ennobled by King Otto of Bavaria in 1899 (adding "von" to his name), and knighted in England in 1907.