John Lucas Tupper, by an unknown photographer. Collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London [Click on the image for more information].
John Lucas Tupper was born in Stoke Newington, London, the son of George Frederick Tupper, a lithographic draughtsman who owned his own printing firm. J. L. Tupper's exact date of birth is unknown, but it was likely either in 1823 or 1824, although he was not baptized at Saint Mark's, Kennington, London, until 31 March 1826. His twin brother Alexander Cohen Tupper became a lithographer. John was interested in art from an early age and was encouraged to pursue a career as an artist by his father. John began initially by modeling in clay, copying from nature and from Old Master prints, and making chalk portraits of his family. He was unhappy with the instruction he received from tutors and was therefore forced to work on his own.
In December 1836 Tupper began to study ancient Greek and Roman sculpture at the British Museum, devoting himself to modeling, drawing, and studying anatomy in hopes of gaining admittance into the Royal Academy Schools. On 17 July 1838 he was finally admitted as a probationer into the Royal Academy Schools and on 8 December 1838 was accepted as a full-fledged student. He was again dissatisfied with the teaching he received because he spent most of his time copying casts rather than working from nature. Initially he was studying to be both a painter and a sculptor. During his time there he met William Holman Hunt, Frederic George Stephens, James Collinson, Thomas Woolner, and Dante Gabriel Rossetti.
In early 1849, after he had left the R. A. Schools, Tupper became an anatomical draughtsman at Guy's Hospital, London, to supplement his income and he was to remain there until the end of 1863. He contributed anatomical drawings to book publications like John Hilton's On the Influence of Mechanical and Physiological Rest and the Diagnostic Value of Pain, published in 1863. He was an early member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle and frequently attended meetings of the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood in the late 1840s and early 1850s. He was particularly close friends with Hunt, William Michael Rossetti, and Stephens.
Tupper was also a poet and wrote articles on literature, art, and art education for the Pre-Raphaelite periodical The Germ, and The Crayon. He published seven works in The Germ, which was printed by the firm owned by Tupper's father and his two brothers, George and Alexander. He also wrote an article on Woolner for The Portfolio in 1871.
Tupper was the member of the Pre-Raphaelite circle most interested in both art and science. He exhibited six times at the Royal Academy between 1854 and 1868, a total of eleven sculptural portraits and portrait medallions. In the 1850s and early 1860s he executed a number of sculptural portraits of his colleagues at Guy's Hospital. In c.1858 he was commissioned to make his most important sculptural work, a statue of the eighteenth-century Swedish botanist Carolus [Carl] Linnaeus for the great hall of the Natural History Museum at Oxford designed by the architects Deane and Woodward.
In 1858 Tupper became a member of the Hogarth Club. In 1863 he left Guy's Hospital to concentrate on his sculptural work but was unable to make a living at this as he failed to attract influential patrons. In March 1865 he was appointed as the master of scientific drawing at Rugby School after Holman Hunt recommended him to the headmaster Frederick Temple. In 1869 Tupper visited Italy with W. M. Rossetti where John became seriously ill and almost died.
With the financial security his position at Rugby brought he was finally able to marry Annie Amelia French on 11 January 1872. The two had met when he was teaching drawing and she was one of his students. The couple lived at 18A North Street, Rugby. They had two children, one of whom was named John Holman Tupper after his friend Hunt who became godfather to the boy. There was a period of declining health during the latter period of his life starting in December 1873 and in April 1878 he had to leave Rugby for some time. In early 1879 Tupper was appointed Curator of the Museum and Art Gallery at Rugby School and on 20 June 1879 he moved into the Curator's House. He died at Warwick, Warwickshire on 29 September 1879.
Bibliography
Barnes, Joanna, and Alexander Kader. "The Sculpture of John Lucas Tupper: 'The Extremest Edge of P.R.Bism'." In Benedict Read and Joanna Barnes, Eds. Pre-Raphaelite Sculpture: Nature and Imagination in British Sculpture. London: Lund Humphries 1991, 66-70.
Coombs, James H., Anne M. Scott, George P. Landow and Arnold A Sanders Eds. A Pre-Raphaelite Friendship: The Correspondence of William Holman Hunt and John Lucas Tupper. Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1996.
Kapoor, Sushma. "John L. Tupper, to 1863: 'Kins of the Cadaverals'." Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies IV No. 2 (1984): 70-86.
Landow, George P. "An Annotated Checklist of J. L. Tupper's Works." Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studies VII No. 1 (1986): 63-68.
Rossetti, William Michael: Some Reminiscences of William Michael Rossetti, Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, Vol. I, 1906, 159-62.
Created 26 April 2024