John Lucas Tupper

Born 1826 (Presumed)
Died 28 September 1879

Active: 1851 - 1879

Country of birth and death: England

Sculptor, medallist, writer on art, poet, school teacher

Born in Stoke Newington, London. He was baptised on 31 March 1826. Tupper was the son of George Frederick Tupper (born c.1791), lithographer. He had a twin brother, Alexander Cohen who was a lithographer and an older brother, George J.F. Tupper (born c.1821), who specialised in making facsimiles of written and printed documents. John attended the Royal Academy Schools from about 1844 and at the same time became an anatomical draftsman at Guy's Hospital, London. This was not only to provide income but also reflected a lifelong interest in science. In the late 1850s Tupper received a commission from the architect William Burges to execute the sculptural decorations at Gayhurst, Buckinghamshire for Lord and Lady Carrington. The project was not a success because Lord Carrington rejected one of Tupper's preparatory models and then relations between the sculptor and architect broke down. The dispute was only resolved through the intervention of Dante Gabriel Rossetti in 1860, and Tupper withdrew from the commission.

Meanwhile he remained working at Guy's until 1863 and was appointed master of drawing at Rugby School two years later. His teaching at Rugby pioneered '...teaching art from the human form, as shown in the skeleton, the anatomical figure and the best antiques...'. The 'Athenaeum' considered him one of the ablest 'draughtsmen of the day' and that his experiment to make the study of drawing more than 'a genteel accomplishment' was 'fully attained'. In recognition of his achievements, Tupper was appointed curator of the museum at Rugby School.

Tupper was an early member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle and was particularly close to William Holman Hunt (later godfather to one of his children) and to Wiliam Michael Rossetti who edited a published volume of his poems in 1897. Tupper was not only a poet but also contributed letters and articles on literature, art and art education to: 'The Germ'; 'Art and Poetry: Being Thoughts towards Nature Conducted principally by Artists'; 'The Crayon'; and 'The Portfolio'. In 1866 he published under the name of 'Outis' 'Hiatus, the Void in Modern Education, its cause and Antidote' (Macmillan). Demonstrating his versatility, Tupper also wrote an article 'On the Centre of Motion in the Human Eye' which was published in the 'Royal Society Proceedings', vol. 22 (1874), pp. 429-30.

His interest in science is reflected in the subjects of his work. In the 1850s and early 1860s Tupper made a number of portraits of his colleagues at Guy's Hospital. He was also commissioned (c.1858) to make a statue of Linnaeus for the Natural History Museum at Oxford designed by the Dublin based practice of Sir Thomas Newenham Deane (1828-99) and Benjamin Woodward (1815-61).

Further information about John Lucas Tupper and his writings can be found at http://www.victorianweb.org/sculpture/tupper/index.html (accessed 28 September 2010) and in Coombs, James H., George P. Landow, Anne Scott, and Arnold Sanders, eds. ‘A Pre-Raphaelite Friendship: The Correspondence of William Holman Hunt and John Lucas Tupper’ Ann Arbor, Michigan: UMI Research Press, 1986 and in Landow, George P. ‘A Check List of the Writings of John Lucas Tupper, Friend of the Pre-Raphaelites’, ‘The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies’, Vol. 7, (1986) pp. 63-68. An obituary of John Lucas Tupper, 'In Memoriam' was published in the Rugby magazine, 'The Meteor', 9 October 1879, p. 115. This last was kindly made available by Rusty MacLean, archivist of Rugby School. The details of the dispute between Burges and Tupper are given in J.M. Crook, 'William Burges and the High Victorian Dream', London and Chicago, 1981, pp. 144-5.

Wealth at death: £600 0s. 0d.
Probate date: 27 November 1879

Citing this record

'John Lucas Tupper', Mapping the Practice and Profession of Sculpture in Britain and Ireland 1851-1951, University of Glasgow History of Art and HATII, online database 2011 [http://sculpture.gla.ac.uk/view/person.php?id=msib7_1220373335, accessed 29 May 2023]