Details of Sculptor

Surname

Lupton

Alternative Surname

First Name

George

Initial of Surname

L

Year of Birth/Baptism

c1757

Flourished

Year of Death

1828

Biographical Details

George Lupton was a stonemason who worked as an assistant to Joseph Nollekens. He was sent to Cambridge in 1812 to erect his master's statue of William Pitt. J T Smith later wrote, ‘It is said that Nollekens charged one thousand pounds for Pitt’s pedestal; but Lupton assured me that he had only twelve pounds for the working expenses’ (Smith 1920, I, 369). Lupton seems to have set up on his own account before Nollekens’s death but nonetheless received £100 under the sculptor’s will (PROB 11/167). His workshop was at 2 Keppel Row, New Road, London, where he is recorded in Land Tax records from 1815 to 1828. During this period, in common with other New Road masons, he produced many funerary tablets, which Gunnis described as ‘not very distinguished.’

Pigot’s Directory of 1822 also records a Thomas Lupton, stonemason, at 2 Keppel Row, who was presumably a relative. George Lupton married twice, to Mary Green in 1786, and to Sarah Roebuck in 1798. He had three children from his second marriage, who were baptised at the Providence Chapel in Little Titchfield Street. He died in 1828, and was buried at St Mary-le-Bone on 12th February. His burial record gives his age as 70, suggesting his birth date was around 1757.

Gunnis gave Lupton’s birth date as 1792, citing as evidence the Artists Annuity Fund archives, although this was a rare error, apparently confusing the stonemason with the engraver Thomas Goff Lupton.

Literary References: Gunnis 1968, 246; extensive additional information from Osmund Bullock: Will PROB 11/1738; Pigot 1822, 153