Details of Sculptor

Surname

Thrupp

Alternative Surname

First Name

Frederick

Initial of Surname

T

Year of Birth/Baptism

1812

Flourished

Year of Death

1895

Biographical Details

Frederick Thrupp was born in Paddington Green, Middx, the second youngest child of Joseph and Mary Thrupp and a half-brother of the noted English hymn writer Dorothy Ann Thrupp. He had a long and not unsuccessful life as a sculptor, providing ideal works, reliefs and busts for both public and private patrons, as well as a smaller number of monuments and architectural pieces. He also undertook several commissions for lithographic works, including engravings for an edition of Milton’s Paradise Lost in 1879.
Thrupp first studied art at Henry Sass’s Academy in Bloomsbury, London, where he learnt modelling and drawing, winning a Society of Arts silver medal in 1829 for a chalk drawing. In 1830 he was admitted to the Royal Academy Schools, where he first exhibited a sculptural work in 1832 entitled The prodigal returned (97). In 1837 he travelled to Rome, remaining there four years, during which time he met many of the best-known sculptors of the time, including William Theed II, R J Wyatt and Bertel Thorvaldsen. The most notable friendship he struck up was perhaps with John Gibson, who is said to have ‘obtained several commissions’ for Thrupp (ODNB). Returning to London in 1842, Thrupp settled at his now widowed mother’s house, 15 Paddington Green, where he lived until her death in 1845, then moving with two of his sisters to 232 Marylebone Road (also called New Road), a home in which he was to remain for the next 40 years. Although he appears initially to have kept a studio at 30 Gloucester Place, Marylebone, in 1858 he established both studio and showroom at 232 Marylebone Road.
Thrupp worked principally on ideal works and reliefs. These often had a religious theme, for instance The Magdalene made for the John, 1st Baron Coleridge, the lord chief justice, c1841; Christ blessing the children of 1860; and a reredos of The Last Supper for St Clement’s, York, c1874 (9, 30, 71). Retallick suggests that these reflected a lifelong aim ‘to create an English School of Religious Art’ (Retallick, 81), which can be seen as contiguous with a number of religious tracts written by Thrupp, including The Angelic Nature, published in 1879, in which he discussed the relationship between Christianity and art. Thrupp also undertook ideal works based on secular subjects and Greek mythology, and a number of portrait busts and statues. Amongst the most notable statues were two for the Palace of Westminster, 1847-58, of Baron Fitzwalter and the 3rd Earl of Oxford, the leaders of the ‘Magna Carta Barons’ (22, 28). These two works are unusual because they were produced in zinc using an electro-deposition process that Elkington and Co had only recently put into commercial service.
Thrupp was rarely commissioned to produce funerary monuments, perhaps because of two controversial commissions for Westminster Abbey obtained early in his career, the memorials to Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton and William Wordsworth(1, 2). Buxton had been a prominent anti-slavery campaigner and member of parliament, and the Westminster monument was commissioned in 1846, a year after his death. Unfortunately for Thrupp, his achievement in gaining the commission was ‘marred by rumours of favouritism’ (Greenwood, 1999, 3). His friend, the painter George Richmond, was on the selection committee. There was much hostile press coverage, including a scathing report in The Art Union which claimed Thrupp’s entry had been ‘the worst statue of all’ chosen in a way which disgusted ‘our best artists with competitions’ (AU, 1846, 264). Thrupp’s success in winning the commission for the Wordsworth memorial in 1851 was similarly problematic. Not only did the Wordsworth family dislike the idea of having a monument in Westminster Abbey, but the Dean and Chapter were opposed to having any more in the Abbey and only accepted the Wordsworth memorial because ‘In this particular instance they could not refuse’ (Robinson, vol 2, 751). Thrupp’s insistence that the monument should be placed in the baptistry instead of Poets’ Corner did not help: the Athenaeum commented that in this location the seated figure appeared ‘literally entombed’ (Athenaeum, 1854, 1467). However, it was again the initial competition that caused most disquiet, for there was a strong suspicion that Thrupp had won despite submitting an inferior entry. The monument presents a seated figure of the poet with a pensive expression and is allegedly based on a drawing of Wordsworth by Haydon made in 1819, though some sources claim the likeness came from the death-mask of Wordsworth cast by Chantrey. Forty-one other sculptors entered the competition, including Thomas Woolner, who had carved the memorial tablet to Wordsworth at St Oswald’s, Grasmere, but according to the Art Journal the refusal to allow the public to see and compare the competition entries for themselves suggested ‘there must have been some lack of fair play if the successful artist was not successful enough to show his design’ (AJ, 1851, 222). That these scandals may have hurt Thrupp’s reputation is perhaps indicated by the fact that he received only one further significant public commission, Timon of Athens, for the Corporation of London in 1853 (26).
In 1868 Thrupp exhibited a pair of doors at the Royal Academy. These were inspired by Ghiberti’s baptistry doors in Florence and comprise ten bas-relief panels showing scenes from John Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress (70). These were purchased for the Bunyan meeting house in Bedford by the 9th Duke of Bedford in 1876. Narrative panels were to become something of a speciality for Thrupp, and he produced another set of doors with 10 panels depicting the poetry of George Herbert in 1878, which were erected in 1888 at Selwyn divinity school, Cambridge, and a third set of 10 relief panels depicting scenes from Milton’s Paradise Lost c1880 (72, 86).
In 1885 Thrupp married Sarah Frances and began a series of extensive tours of North Africa and Europe, including Algeria in 1885-86, Italy and southern Europe in 1887 and Westphalia and the Low Countries in 1889. By this time he had virtually stopped sculpting, and in 1887 he left his London home and studio for good, to settle in Upton near Torquay. Here Thrupp negotiated the disposal of the remaining contents of his studio, with most of it going to the city of Winchester in 1894 for display in a ‘Thrupp Gallery’ at Abbey House. Thrupp died of pneumonia the following year and was buried in Torquay. After his death his reputation fell rapidly, as evidenced by Winchester’s ungracious return to his family of Thrupp’s gift to the city in 1911. The gift was passed on to Torquay borough council later that year, and augmented in 1916 by an additional bequest to Torquay from Thrupp’s widow. This included numerous unsold works, models in clay and plaster, drawings, etchings and notebooks, as well as studio effects. In 1932 much of this gift was placed on display at Torre Abbey, Torquay, where the collection remains to this day.
Michael Paraskos
Literary References: AU 1846, 264; AJ 1851, 222; Athenaeum 1854, 1467; Palgrave 1866, 250; DNB 1898 335-36 (Dodgson); Robinson 1938, 751; Gunnis 1968, 394; Read 1982, 79-80, 103-4; Retallick 1998, 80-81; Greenwood 1999, 1-12; Matthews 2004, 181-85, ODNB (Greenwood)
Archival References: Parish Register, St James, Paddington; 1861 census
Miscellaneous Drawings: chalk drawing of a bust, silver medal, Soc of A, 1829 (RSA Transactions, vol 47, xxiii )
Portraits of the Sculptor: photo, c1890-95 (repr Greenwood 1999, 1)