Thomas Goff Lupton (1791-1873). Mezzotint engraver. Lupton engraved four of the published plates for Turner 's Liber Studiorum (generally regarded to be among the most successful of the series), and several unpublished plates. He was a pioneer of using the mezzotint process on steel (as opposed to the less durable copper which was used for the Liber plates), improving upon Say 's experiments by using soft steel plates. He went on to engrave many steel plates after Turner during the 1820s (see Rawlinson, The Engraved Work of J.M.W. Turner, volume 2, pp.209-211). For further biographical details see Engen, Dictionary of Victorian Engravers, pp.130-31, and Davenport, Mezzotints, pp. 185-87.
Among the works which Lupton executed after Turner were twelve plates from the unfinished series called The Ports of England (1826-28), republished in 1856, with text by Ruskin under the title The Harbours of England. Lupton had by this time already engraved several plates under Ruskin's supervision for The Stones of Venice (1851-53), and engraved more for Modern Painters III (1856), IV (1856), and V (1860). Lupton's facsimiles of Liber plates were highly regarded by Ruskin. George Allen, who engraved many plates for Ruskin in later years, was trained by Lupton in the art of mezzotint engraving in the 1860s ( Works, 36.lxi-lxii, and also Davis, Ruskin's Last Turner Engravings). In 1874, a year after the engraver's death, Ruskin referred to him as 'my very dear friend Thomas Lupton' ( Works, 9.15).