(1770 - 1831), painter and writer, s. of William Duppa; Trin. Oxf. 1807 [sic].
1797 [dep. England Aug. 1796] Rome, Naples (Feb. - May), Rome [England by Oct. 1797]
Duppa set out in August 1796, intending a three-year tour to include Hamburg, Vienna, Dresden, Constantinople and Egypt before returning home through Italy.1 Most of his time was spent in Naples, Farington hearing in the spring of 1797 that he had already passed through Rome.2 On 24 February 1797 Sir William Hamilton sought permission for Henry [Edward?] Swinburne 'and his painters' Duppa and Reinagle to draw around Naples and to have passports for Sicily, apparently without success according to a letter Duppa wrote Farington.3 But the same three, with William Artaud, succeeded in making a tour of Capri and the bays of Salerno and Naples in May.4 Duppa was 'not so much struck with Naples as some are - thinks of trees in England for scenery'.5 He was later in Rome (intending to learn the language), lodged with two matrons: one was made of 'angles and knobs', the other had a face that blazed like 'a Seville orange' - 'with these fair dames, each pressing with her rosy finger his brawny arm, the Platonic Duppa nightly perambulates the purlieus of Trinita dei Monti'.6
Duppa left England a democrat but returned 'a complete convert' in 1797.7 He provided Farington with accounts of the English artists under French occupation in Rome,8 and he published A Journal of the Most Remarkable Occurences That Took Place in Rome [1799]. Duppa returned to Italy at least once, publishing his Travels in Italy, Sicily, and the Lipari Islands in 1828; he also wrote on Michelangelo and Raphael.
1. Farington Diary (4 Aug. 1796). 2. Ibid. (26 Mar. 1797). 3. ASN e 674. Farington Diary (16 Jun. 1797). 4. Artaud letters MSS (2 Jun. 1797). 5. Farington Diary (16 Jun. 1797). 6. Artaud letter bk.MSS (n.d. [Aug. - Dec. 1797]). 7. Farington Diary (1 Jan. 1799). 8. Ibid. (9 Oct. 1798).