Portrait Medallion of William Holman Hunt. 1857. Plaster low bas relief. 15 1/4 inches high (38.5 cm) – relief size. Private collection, image courtesy of the author. [Click on the image to enlarge it.]
As a sculptor Tupper was best known for his portrait medallions. He exhibited six times at the Royal Academy between 1854 and 1868, a total of eleven sculptural portraits and portrait medallions. Many of these were sculptural portraits of his colleagues at Guy's Hospital or of other medical or surgical practitioners. He showed this portrait of his Pre-Raphaelite colleague William Holman Hunt at the Royal Academy in 1857, no. 1301. Tupper had met Hunt when both were students at the Royal Academy Schools in the 1840s and the two remained friends until Tupper's death in 1879. Tupper is also known to have done a portrait medallion of his friend William Michael Rossetti in 1869, but this was never exhibited as it was rejected by the hanging committee of the Royal Academy.
Although this is a very good likeness of Hunt, it was largely ignored by the critics who reviewed the Royal Academy exhibition in 1857. On 26 May 1857 Hunt wrote to Tupper from Oxford where he was staying to lament about the poor hanging at the Royal Academy of the relief Tupper had done of him: "I wish the portrait had been better hung for your sake. When I last went to the Exhibition, I saw it in the wrong light. Before I had hoped - trusting to report - that you were more fairly served than I had expected" (Coombs, letter 21, 49.). The poor hanging may have been why this relief wasn't noticed and reviewed. At some point the medallion came into the collection of the eminent physician Sir William Gull whom Tupper would have known, as Gull had served as Governor of Guy's Hospital where Tupper worked as an anatomical draughtsman. Gull had also been appointed as Fullerian Professor of Physiology and Comparative Anatomy at the Royal Institution of Great Britain from 1848-1851. Tupper had exhibited a medallion portrait of Gull at the Royal Academy in 1855, no. 1487.
In 1866 a second medallion of Hunt was commissioned by Mrs. George Waugh [Mary Walker Waugh], the mother of Hunt's wife Fanny. On 20 August 1866 Hunt wrote to Tupper just prior to his departure for the Holy Land: "My wife with her Mother went to Dr. Gulls some weeks since and they were much delighted with your medallion of me and ever since they have been asking me to apply for one, and I have only delayed for want of time. If you can get one and send it to Mrs. Waugh to the address at the head of this note, I shall be extremely obliged to you" (Coombs, letter 52, 78). Based on a letter from Hunt to Tupper of 19 November 1867 this commission was not handled expeditiously: "Mrs. Waugh would I know still much value a copy of your medallion of myself but do not put yourself to any inconvenience in sending it now. any time will do. it is very good natured of you to think /of it/[.] I wish so much you had done one of my dear wife" (Coombs, letter 53, 79). Hunt then writes in a letter of 30 December 1867 that "I will call some day for the medallion" (Coombs, letter 55, p. 82). As late as 20 January 1868 Hunt mentions in a letter inviting Tupper to dinner at the Waugh's "I will not trouble you to bring the medallion – altho at present I cannot tell when I may be able to call" (Coombs, letter 56, 82). At some point soon after one can only assume that Hunt's in-laws finally received the promised medallion.
Bibliography
Coombs, James, 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, 1986.
Kapoor, Sushma: "John L. Tupper to 1863: 'King of the Cadaverals'," The Journal of Pre-Raphaelite Studie IV (May, 1984): 78.
Specialist Auction: Decorative Arts. Adam Partridge Auctioneers, Macclesfield. Cheshire, (July 2, 2025): lot 361.
Thirwell, Angela. William and Lucy. The Other Rossettis. New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 2003, fig. 29, 35-36.
Created 8 August 2025