Thomas Goff Lupton

The recorded working language is English. The field of work recorded is graphics, visual arts and engraving. Places of work recorded in the authority are London. Work by Thomas Goff Lupton is recorded in the collections of National Gallery of Victoria, Minneapolis Institute of Art, The Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, Finnish National Gallery and National Library of Wales.

• Name — Thomas Goff Lupton • Born — 3 September 1791 • Birthplace — Clerkenwell, London, England • Died — 18 May 1873 • Place of death — Russell Square, London, England • Known for — Engravings, development of steel engraving plates Thomas Goff Lupton (3 September 1791 – 18 May 1873) was an English mezzotint engraver and artist, who engraved many works by J. M. W. Turner and other notable British painters of the 19th century. He also produced some pastels, exhibited at the Royal Academy. He played an important part in advancing the technical aspect of engraving by introducing soft steel plates.

Lupton was born in Clerkenwell, London, the son of William and Mary Lupton. His father, a working goldsmith, apprenticed him to George Clint by whom he was instructed in mezzotint engraving. Later he became assistant to Samuel William Reynolds, and, when Samuel Cousins was articled to the latter in 1814, Lupton gave him his first lesson. Between 1811 and 1820 he exhibited a few pastel portraits at the Royal Academy. Lupton was the youngest of the engravers employed by J. M. W. Turner upon the "Liber Studiorum" ("Book of Studies"), and he executed four of the best of the published and several of the unpublished plates.

In 1825 six plates by Lupton, after Turner, were published with the title Views of the Ports of England. These were reissued in 1856 with six more by Lupton, as The Harbours of England, with text by John Ruskin; be also engraved many of the plates for Gems of Art (1823), Beauties of Claude (1825), Turner and Girtin's River Scenery of England (1827, and Lady Charlotte Bury's The Three Great Sanctuaries of Tuscany (1833). His most notable single plates included The Infant Samuel, after Reynolds; Belshazzar's Feast, after John Martin; Wellington surveying the Field of Waterloo, after Benjamin Haydon; The Eddystons Lighthouse and Fishing at Margate, after Turner; some portraits of theatrical groups after Clint, and portraits after Sir Thomas Lawrence, Henry Perronet Briggs, Thomas Phillips, John Watson Gordon, and others. Lupton also started engraving, a large plate from Turners Calais Pier under the artist's direction, but due to the frequent alterations made by the painter it was never completed. Between 1868 and 1864, he re-engraved fifteen of the Liber Studiorum subjects for a series intended to be issued in parts, but the project failed and the plates remained unpublished. He was an active supporter of the Artists' Annuity Fund, of which he was elected president in 1836.

• Illustration — Grave of Thomas Goff Lupton in Highgate Cemetery Lupton died on 18 May 1873 at 4 Keppel Street, Russell Square, London, where he had lived for 36 years. He was buried on the western side of Highgate Cemetery.

By his marriage in 1818 to Susanna Oliver he had a family of six sons and one daughter. His youngest son, Nevil Oliver Lupton, born in 1828, won the "Turner" gold medal of the Royal Academy at the first competition in 1867, and was a frequent exhibitor of landscapes until 1877.