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Lot Essay
Thomas Hope (1769-1831), the British author and virtuoso, was born in Amsterdam to John Hope, a banker of Scottish origin, and Philippina Barbara van der Hoeven. He embarked on an extensive Grand Tour in 1787, during which time he sketched architectural remains in ancient lands bordering the Mediterranean Sea. He continued to travel for several years, revisiting Italy and also journeying to Egypt in 1797 and to Athens in 1799 in order to pursue his interest in antiquities. With the Napoleonic disturbances in Europe, Hope took a hiatus from his travels until 1815.
Hope amassed an impressive art collection, chiefly during his stay in Italy; the collection was further augmented by his youngest brother, Henry Philip Hope. His collecting interests may very well have been sparked by his father, who had been a patron of Giambattista Piranesi; and by one of his cousins who was acquainted with the scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), author of History of Ancient Art, and the collector Cardinal Albani; and perhaps also by his uncle, Henry Hope, who unsuccessfully attempted to purchase part of the Borghese collection of classical marbles. The journeys on which he encountered civilizations past and present, together with his familial connections to the artists and antiquarians of the day informed his romantic Neo-classicism and contributed to his patronage of such exponents of that style as John Flaxman, Antonio Canova, and Bertel Thorvaldsen (see Waywell, op. cit., p. 35).
With the occupation of the Netherlands by France, Hope permanently settled in England in 1795. In 1799 Hope purchased a substantial mansion in London on Duchess Street off Portland Place to the north of Oxford Circus. The house had originally been designed by the famed architect Robert Adam around 1768. Hope spent the interval between 1799 and 1804 designing the interiors of that house and acquiring its furnishings with the objective of creating "a coherent ambient symbolic of the antiquities contained within" (Humbert, et al., Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art, 1730-1930, Paris, 1994, pp. 186-187). The house was officially opened to the public in 1804 and was accompanied by the publication of Household Furniture and Interior Decoration Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope, which included engravings of many of the rooms. The volume was to have considerable influence on the taste of English Regency design and established what came to be known as the "Hope Style."
Hope acquired the Isis in 1801 at the Christie's sale of the collection of Sir William Hamilton, the famous antiquarian, from whom Hope had earlier acquired a collection of Greek vases. The marble was displayed in his "Statue Gallery" in the Duchess Street mansion, paired with an archaistic Dionysos of similar scale. The two were later displayed together at Hope's country residence, the Deepdene, near Dorking in Surrey. Michaelis saw the Isis there in the library at Deepdene while researching for his Ancient Marbles in Great Britain.
Hope amassed an impressive art collection, chiefly during his stay in Italy; the collection was further augmented by his youngest brother, Henry Philip Hope. His collecting interests may very well have been sparked by his father, who had been a patron of Giambattista Piranesi; and by one of his cousins who was acquainted with the scholar Johann Joachim Winckelmann (1717-1768), author of History of Ancient Art, and the collector Cardinal Albani; and perhaps also by his uncle, Henry Hope, who unsuccessfully attempted to purchase part of the Borghese collection of classical marbles. The journeys on which he encountered civilizations past and present, together with his familial connections to the artists and antiquarians of the day informed his romantic Neo-classicism and contributed to his patronage of such exponents of that style as John Flaxman, Antonio Canova, and Bertel Thorvaldsen (see Waywell, op. cit., p. 35).
With the occupation of the Netherlands by France, Hope permanently settled in England in 1795. In 1799 Hope purchased a substantial mansion in London on Duchess Street off Portland Place to the north of Oxford Circus. The house had originally been designed by the famed architect Robert Adam around 1768. Hope spent the interval between 1799 and 1804 designing the interiors of that house and acquiring its furnishings with the objective of creating "a coherent ambient symbolic of the antiquities contained within" (Humbert, et al., Egyptomania: Egypt in Western Art, 1730-1930, Paris, 1994, pp. 186-187). The house was officially opened to the public in 1804 and was accompanied by the publication of Household Furniture and Interior Decoration Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope, which included engravings of many of the rooms. The volume was to have considerable influence on the taste of English Regency design and established what came to be known as the "Hope Style."
Hope acquired the Isis in 1801 at the Christie's sale of the collection of Sir William Hamilton, the famous antiquarian, from whom Hope had earlier acquired a collection of Greek vases. The marble was displayed in his "Statue Gallery" in the Duchess Street mansion, paired with an archaistic Dionysos of similar scale. The two were later displayed together at Hope's country residence, the Deepdene, near Dorking in Surrey. Michaelis saw the Isis there in the library at Deepdene while researching for his Ancient Marbles in Great Britain.