Abstract
Author, artist, designer and collector Thomas Hope (1769–1831) published his influential Costume of the Ancients in 1809 and in an enlarged version in 1812. This article identifies archaeological sources for figures in the plates of Costume of the Ancients and seeks to explain why Hope altered his sources by adding patterns from Greek vases. The process of adding Greek vase patterns is traced from preliminary drawings by Hope at the Gennadius Library in Athens, through a second album of final drawings at the Gennadius Library by Henry Moses, the principal engraver for Costume of the Ancients, and to Moses’s plates in Costume of the Ancients. The argument provides evidence that Hope’s choices of added patterns were made with an eye to how they could serve to improve contemporary Neoclassical dress. That this was Hope’s intention was stated in the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients, where he expressed the desire to ‘present to his fair model some useful hints for improving the elegance and dignity of her attire’. Signed etchings from Moses’s Sketches in Outline (1808), an untitled pamphlet of 1808–1809, and Designs of Modern Costume (1812) provided examples of ideal contemporary dress in the Greek style. Moses’s etchings accomplished this by incorporating Greek patterns from Costume of the Ancients, along with its Greek drapery types that were adapted to conform with contemporary dress forms. Unsigned fashion plates from Lady’s Magazine from 1807 to 1809 exhibit these same patterns and drapery types, and may have been designed by Moses.
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Introduction
Thomas Hope,Footnote 1 who lived from 1769 to 1831, was from a wealthy Scottish family of merchants and bankers that lived and prospered in Amsterdam for four generations. In 1794, ahead of Napoleon’s invasion the following year, the family evacuated to England. Rather than devote himself to business, Thomas Hope spent his time travelling, sketching, collecting, designing, and writing.Footnote 2 Beginning at the age of eighteen, Hope travelled extensively in the Mediterranean between 1787 and 1795.Footnote 3 Five volumes of Hope’s drawings from his travels survive at the Benaki Museum in Athens.Footnote 4 Those of Greece have been published and include many landscapes, views of buildings, and architectural sculptures—many of them ancient—and inhabitants in the traditional dress of different regions of Greece.Footnote 5 Hope was a self-trained draughtsman, who attested that he drew from early childhood.Footnote 6 Fani-Maria Tsigakou, retired curator from the Benaki Museum who published Hope’s views of Greece, states that they ‘testify to his superb draughtsmanship. Hope’s fine and sensitive pen outline provides strong evidence of a natural facility rather than of a professionally acquired skill’.Footnote 7
Another album of drawings, sold at the same sale as Hope’s travel drawings, survives at the Gennadius Library in Athens (see Supplementary Fig. 1a).Footnote 8 In 2006, Dr Tsigakou affirmed the attribution of these drawings to Hope, as can also be accomplished by comparing their style and handwritten labels to Hope’s published drawings of Greece. The album bears the title on its spine ‘[O]UTLINES FOR MY COSTUME’, and it seems to consist of some of Hope’s preliminary drawings for the engravings in one of his most influential publications, Costume of the Ancients (1st ed., 1809; 2nd ed., 1812).Footnote 9 There are ninety-seven drawings in the album. Eighteen of the pages of laid paper of the drawings bear the watermark of 1804; three have the watermark of 1806; and four have the watermark of 1808. One of the drawings presented in this article (Fig. 4) has the earliest watermark of 1804; this drawing and the other seventeen pages with the same watermark establish that Hope may have started to work on the drawings as early as five years before the publication of the first edition of Costume of the Ancients in 1809.
A second album of drawings at the Gennadius Library contains 106 drawings and bears the title ‘COSTUMES OF THE ANCIENTS. HOPE’ (see Supplementary Fig. 1b). Twenty-three of these drawings have the same figures as Hope’s drawings (see Figs. 2–3, 9–10 and 12–13; and Supplementary Figs. 61a–b and 67a–b) and incorporate changes that Hope indicated in his preliminary drawings. The figures in these drawings also have the same scale as the corresponding engravings from the two editions of Costume of the Ancients (see, for example, Fig. 3 and Supplementary Fig. 11a–b), evidence which supports the conclusion that the second album contains final drawings that served as models for the engravings.Footnote 10 Henry Moses, the principal engraver of the plates in the two editions of Costume of the Ancients, appears to be the artist who executed most of the drawings in this album. The attribution to Moses can be deduced from the handwriting on the drawings, from Moses’s signature as engraver on corresponding engravings (see Fig. 3 and Supplementary Fig. 11a–b), and from the introduction to Costume of the Ancients, where Hope singles out Moses for thanks, describing him as ‘the young artist who has engraved the greatest number of my drawings; and those that have been transferred on copper in the most superior manner’.Footnote 11 In general, Moses was known for ‘enjoying a great reputation for his outline plates, which are distinguished for the purity and correctness of the drawing’.Footnote 12
This article will explore something that is puzzling from an archaeological standpoint. The drapery on antiquities that served as Hope’s ancient models often lack the isolated ornaments and patterned borders that Hope added to his preliminary drawings of the figures for Costume of the Ancients. The question is, why did Hope alter the antiquities he used as models in this way? This article will demonstrate that such modifications can best be explained by one of Hope’s stated purposes of Costume of the Ancients—that is, to influence taste in contemporary dress. An examination of Hope’s preliminary drawings will reveal how Hope first established the outlines for his figures, and then worked out, often in pencil, their decoration. The patterns that Hope settled on were subsequently confirmed in Moses’s final drawings and used in the engravings in Costume of the Ancients. The article will also show how the decorative motifs used by Hope on the clothing in Costume of the Ancients were compatible with Neoclassical dress, as is evident in their presence in Moses’s publications on fashion, and in their inclusion in contemporary fashion plates that might have been designed by Moses.
Costume Publications by Hope and Moses
Hope’s Costume of the Ancients was first published in 1809 with 200 plates; an enlarged version with 300 plates came out in 1812. Both editions contain a lengthy introduction that discusses ancient costume but does not connect the textual discussion with the plates. In June 1809, a review of the first edition of Costume of the Ancients appeared in Ackermann’s Repository.Footnote 13 The review is signed simply ‘Arbiter Elegantiarum’, meaning ‘Judge of Taste’; costume historian Aileen Ribeiro and others believe this title refers to the contemporary fashion trend-setter Beau Brummell.Footnote 14 The review attributes ‘the late change in dress principally’ to the book, and it goes on to credit ‘almost all our modern improvements in taste’ to Hope’s efforts.
Hope’s connection to the world of fashion was enhanced through his meeting and hiring of the gifted printmaker Henry Moses. One possible way that Hope came to know him was through his work. An early publication by Moses that seems to have escaped most scholarly attention is inscribed on all five plates and the title page with the date of December 1st, 1804. Entitled Sketches of Modern Conversation and Fashions, Drawn & Engraved by Henry Moses,Footnote 15 the two known copies exhibit slightly different techniques. The copy at the Minneapolis Institute of Art (Supplementary Fig. 2) has engraved outlines of the figures, with other details in the soft-ground etching technique; a sepia wash is applied in various places, such as the left woman’s shawl. Rather than having the sepia wash, the copy at the Yale Center for British Art has rich colours applied to the drapery, the furniture, and the rug.Footnote 16 Four of the five prints show groups of fashionably dressed people in domestic interiors, and the fifth shows a walk in a park. The elongated necks and bodies of the ladies and their long, flowing Neoclassical gowns lend them a refined elegance.Footnote 17 The emphasis is on the figures and not the domestic settings that they occupy.
The technique and style of these prints of 1804 are significantly different from another early publication by Moses of February 1808. This slender volume, entitled Sketches in Outline Drawn and Engraved by Henry Moses (see Supplementary Fig. 3),Footnote 18 is only known through two copies, and appears not to have been discussed in previous scholarship.Footnote 19 Depending on the copy, Sketches in Outline has twelve or thirteen outline etchings, which are all signed by Moses as draughtsman and engraver; the etchings are dated through the inscription on each plate of ‘Published by H. Moses Feb. 1808’. These etchings are executed in the outline technique, with little interior detail other than drapery fold linesFootnote 20; and the proportions of the figures are more compressed than the elongated figures in Moses’s 1804 prints (compare, for example, the lady in Supplementary Fig. 3 with the two ladies in Supplementary Fig. 2).Footnote 21
Moses’s Sketches in Outline is likely the same as a publication mentioned in Joseph Farington’s diary entry for 27 February 1808, where Moses is described as showing his work in an attempt to gain patrons:
A young man of the name of Moses, came in [to see Benjamin West, then president of the Royal Academy] and produced some etched outlines of small groupes with which West was much delighted, saying, they were much superior to anything of the kind published by the French.Footnote 22
Photos of ten out of the thirteen etchings in the copy at the Metropolitan Museum of Art are available for viewing online, and one of the authors was permitted to study and photograph the other three.Footnote 23 Most of these thirteen etchings show small groups of people in Neoclassical dress in domestic interiors (eight etchings; see Fig. 5 and Supplementary Fig. 3) and in theatre boxes (two etchings).Footnote 24 They are nearly identical to ten etchings by Moses from his better-known publication, dedicated to Hope and published four years later in 1812: Designs of Modern Costume Engraved for Thomas Hope of Deepdene.Footnote 25 This later publication has twenty etchings altogether; they all show domestic and theatrical interiors and are all signed by Moses as draughtsman and engraver.Footnote 26 The only difference in the ten shared etchings is the presence of the inscribed date of February 1808 on the earlier etchings (Fig. 5 and Supplementary Fig. 3), while the ones printed in 1812 had this publication date removed.
Besides the ten etchings of domestic interiors, the other three etchings from the New York copy of Sketches in Outline are three ‘fancy pieces’, also dated February 1808 (see Supplementary Fig. 4 and note 27).These three ‘fancy pieces’ are included, unchanged, in another early and unknown publication with Moses’s etchings, an untitled pamphlet at the Metropolitan Museum that has nine dated ‘fancy pieces’ altogether.Footnote 27 The additional six ‘fancy pieces’ in the pamphlet bear a slightly later date, as indicated by the inscription ‘Published by H. Moses, May 1.1809’ (see Supplementary Fig. 5a–b).Footnote 28 The nine ‘fancy pieces’ from the pamphlet were previously only known to have first appeared in an 1823 publication entitled A series of twenty-nine Designs of Modern Costume, drawn and engraved by Henry Moses (see Supplementary Fig. 6a–b),Footnote 29 which also includes the twenty domestic scenes from the 1812 edition of Designs of Modern Costume; all twenty-nine etchings in the 1823 publication lack dates. Being able to backdate ten of Moses’s costume etchings to February 1808, and all nine ‘fancy pieces’ to February 1808 or 1 May 1809, is significant, because some of them exhibit patterns Moses seems to have learned from Hope (to be elucidated below); thus, their influence can be seen to parallel that of Hope’s Costume of the Ancients.
David Watkin noted that the 1812 version of ‘A Woman Seated on Grecian Sofa with a Lapdog, in an Interior’, and hence also the earlier version dated February 1808 in Supplementary Fig. 3, copies two articles of furniture from Hope’s influential Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, published in 1807.Footnote 30 One is a ‘Tripod table, supported by chimaeras’ (Supplementary Fig. 7a) and the other is a ‘Settee’Footnote 31 (Supplementary Fig. 7b, the leg and armrest on the viewer’s right). Because Hope’s furniture is included here and elsewhere in Moses’s domestic scenes in Sketches in Outline, the conclusion can be drawn that Moses judged this furniture to provide an ideal backdrop for his elegant figures, dressed in their Neoclassical attire. The presence of Hope’s furniture, the fact that the proportions of the figures are not elongated, and the use of the outline technique all suggest that by the time Sketches in Outline was published in February 1808, Moses was under the influence of Hope’s style; he must have been collaborating with Hope not only on these contemporary interiors, but also on his copies of Hope’s drawings and his engravings for the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients.
The Outlines and Decoration of Greek Vases
Hope and Moses clearly shared an interest in both contemporary costume and ancient art. In fact, Hope was a well-known collector of antiquities, especially Greek vases.Footnote 32 Evidence presented below will demonstrate that Hope’s vases and the publications on vases in Hope’s library provided sources for both the figures themselves and the elegant patterns that Hope added to them in his drawings for Costume of the Ancients.Footnote 33 Hope singles out three vase publications as providing inspiration for his Household Furniture. He lists them as ‘D’Hancarville’s Greek vases. Passeri’s ditto. Tischbein’s ditto… which afford the most authentic and most elegant specimens which we possess, of Grecian rites, ceremonies, customs, utensils, and dresses’.Footnote 34 These same three publications coincide with the ones that are cited most frequently in this article as sources for Costume of the Ancients. Speaking of Greek vases in the introduction to the first edition of Costume of the Ancients, Hope explains how they influenced his furniture designs:
Infinite was the variety of Greek vases for religious rites and for domestic purposes… These vessels depended, for their beauty, on that elegance of outline, which may make the plainest utensil look graceful, and not on that mere richness of decoration, which cannot prevent the most costly piece of furniture, where the former is neglected, from remaining uncouth and ugly.Footnote 35
Clearly, Hope was influenced by the ‘elegance of outline’ of Greek vases in his furniture designs. He seems to have given equal importance to the outlines of individual figures in his Costume of the Ancients. He emphasizes this priority in discussing why he chose for his figures to be executed, mostly by Henry Moses, as outline engravings.
Of this species of engraving… no part can be executed mechanically, or by inferior hands. Every stroke here requires an artist skilled in drawing, and uniting with the most correct eye the most free and masterly touch.Footnote 36
In connecting outline engraving with skilled drawing, Hope was following Winckelmann’s admiration for the drawing skills of ancient vase painters. In one of the French translations that Hope owned of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s Geschichte der Kunst des Alterthums, Winckelmann described a collection of Greek vases as ‘un trésor de dessins’ (a treasure of designs), comparable in ‘la facilité et la hardiesse’ (the facility and confidence) of their lines to ‘les premières esquisses de Raphaël’ (the first sketches of Raphael).Footnote 37
Hope elaborates on the importance of outlines in a letter to industrialist Matthew Boulton of 14 September 1805:
Beauty consists not in ornament; it consists in outline—where this is elegant and well understood the simplest object will be pleasing: without a good outline, the richest and most decorated will only appear tawdry. Ornament can only be of use after we have sufficiently surveyed and dwelt upon the perfection of the whole, to make us find new pleasure in examining the detail.Footnote 38
Hope’s efforts to achieve a pleasing richness of interior ornamentation can be observed in his album of drawings for Costume of the Ancients. He experimented with different possible ornaments for his figures, often in pencil, after he had established their outlines. Such ornaments appear to largely consist of patterns that have been derived from Greek vases. These motifs were not only attested in depictions of male and female dress on Greek vases; they were also derived, but not copied slavishly, from decorative borders flanking figural scenes. This article concentrates on pattern motifs that seem to have been inspired by Greek vases and were utilized in figures from Costume of the Ancients, and that were also adopted in contemporary dress, as attested by Moses’s modern costume publications, fashion plates from women’s magazines, and portraits of Hope’s wife Louisa and at least one member of the British royal family.
The Development of the Palmette Motif
The admirable qualities of ‘elegance of outline’ and ‘richness of decoration’ can be found in an Attic red-figure neck amphora once in Hope’s collection and now at the Museum of Art, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD; Fig. 1). Hope clearly studied this vase, for he included the figure from one side of it in both editions of Costume of the Ancients (see Supplementary Fig. 9a–b), calling it ‘Greek herald’. Hope appears to have not only taken this figure from the vase, but he also appears to have copied the border of horizontally positioned palmettes within lyre shapes that is under the ground line beneath the herald. He penned in a very similar rendering of the same pattern, and marked it ‘approved’ on his preliminary drawing no. 49 (Fig. 2).
As is evident from Hope’s preliminary drawing no. 49, the ‘approved’ pattern is positioned to the right of a commanding figure without a label, who can be identified as Athena by her scaly aegis with a serpentine border and Gorgon’s head, her helmet, and her spear. An infrared photo (Supplementary Fig. 10) shows that Hope originally intended for a different pattern to be used on the base of the goddess’s mantle, a himation (ἱμάτιον in Greek)Footnote 39; this pencilled pattern was perhaps the meander (or key) pattern, a simplified version of which decorates the bottom edge of the figure’s underlying robe, a chiton (χιτών in Greek).Footnote 40 However, he clearly ended up changing his mind and opted for the more ornate palmette pattern, as the ‘approved’ label indicates. In fact, this palmette pattern is what appears on the himation of ‘Minerva [the Roman name for the goddess] from a Statue at Florence’, on Moses’s final drawing no. 29 (Fig. 3); and it appears in the same position on the engravings in both editions of Costume of the Ancients (Supplementary Fig. 11a–b).Footnote 41
It is important to note that the bronze original on which Hope’s and Moses’s renderings are based has no patterns on her himation or chiton, the only ornamented portion of the figure being her aegis.Footnote 42 This figure is one of many examples where Hope added decorative motifs from vase sources to renderings of antiquities, on the originals of which they were not present. In his introduction to the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients, Hope provides justification for his addition of pattern motifs to the antiquities illustrated in his handbook:
Notwithstanding that the numerous colourless Greek statues still in existence, are apt to impress us with an idea that the Grecian attire was most simple and uniform in its hue; the Greek vases found buried in tombs; the paintings dug out of Herculaneum and of Pompeya, and even a few statues in marble and in bronze, enriched with stained or with inlaid borders, prove that it [i.e., drapery] was equally gaudy in its colours, and studied in its designs.Footnote 43
In Hope’s preliminary drawing no. 58 (Fig. 4), entitled ‘Hero with his petasus on a Greek vase’,Footnote 44 he may have used the elements from the horizontal palmette border on the RISD neck amphora (Fig. 1) to develop an elegant palmette ornament. On the upper right are two pencilled palmettes inside the lyre border (Fig. 4, Design 1). Below is another pencilled sketch, which includes in the middle an inverted palmette without a border (Design 2). On the cloak of the hero and to the lower right of the figure, Hope has combined the non-bordered with the bordered palmette in an arrangement in which the bases of the palmettes oppose each other, as on the RISD vase and the figure of Minerva; he also has shortened the lyre shape and decreased the size of the simplified palmette inside the lyre border (Design 3). Still not satisfied with the design, Hope adds a small palmette beneath the lyre border (Design 4, to the lower right of Design 3). Design 4 is the one that is adopted for this figure in Moses’s engravings (Supplementary Fig. 12a–c),Footnote 45 which, unlike Hope’s preliminary drawing, is entitled ‘Grecian warrior in his travelling dress with his petasus or hat thrown back on his shoulder’. Hope’s figure was derived from an Attic red-figure calyx krater once in Hope’s collection (Supplementary Fig. 14a); it was either copied from the vase itself, which he acquired as part of Sir William Hamilton’s second vase collection,Footnote 46 or from Wilhelm Tischbein’s illustration of it, from the Collection of engravings from ancient vases mostly of pure Greek workmanship discovered in sepulchres in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies… now in the possession of Sir Wm. Hamilton (Supplementary Fig. 14b).Footnote 47 Note that the ornament is absent on the original vase as well as in Tischbein’s engraving of it.
Another instance where Hope uses this motif shows how he altered designs even after Moses’s final drawing had been executed. In Moses’s drawing of a ‘Grecian female in mourning’ (Supplementary Fig. 15a–b), the lower right corner of the woman’s himation has a palmette ornament like Design 3 in Hope’s drawing in Fig. 4.Footnote 48 In the final engravings (Supplementary Fig. 17a–c), the motif is slightly different, in that there are added rosettes inside the inner spirals of the lower palmette’s lyre-shaped border and a mini-palmette beneath the border. One can imagine Hope intervening and instructing Moses to further enrich the ornament because he felt that a more elaborate motif would be appropriate for the himation of this female figure.
Hope’s practice of rich ornamentation inspired by vase decoration can be explained if his handbook is considered through the lens of one of its stated purposes. In his introduction to the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients, Hope explains that one purpose of the publication was to:
present to his fair model some useful hints for improving the elegance and dignity of her attire, by the dismissal of those paltry and insignificant gew-gaws and trimmings, that can only hold together through means of pins, sowings, and other eye-rending contrivances, unknown in ancient dresses; through which the breadth and simplicity of modern female attire is destroyed and frittered away.Footnote 49
Although the basic form of contemporary dresses was simple, it could be embellished with various trimmings. An example of the type of overworked gown that Hope warns against is shown in Supplementary Fig. 18, with its beaded satin borders and central hanging strands of beads.
In both editions of Costume of the Ancients (1809 and 1812), Hope embellishes his illustrations of ancient garments with patterns that were developed by looking at those used on Greek vases on the costumes themselves and in decorative borders. His figures, which exemplify the purity of line and elegant simplicity of ancient dress forms and complementary decorative motifs, provide ‘useful hints’ on how women could improve the general design of their clothes.
The Use of the Palmette Motif in Neoclassical Dress
Hope’s patterns were decorative motifs that worked well with Neoclassical garments. The compatibility of these patterns with Neoclassical dress is shown in Moses’s publications about contemporary dress, an example of which is his inclusion of this palmette motif in several of his plates. This motif, in a simplified form, can be seen on the corner of the stole worn by the woman seated on the right in plate 9 of Sketches in Outline (Fig. 5), and on the corner of the loose, vest-like garment worn by the figure of ‘Sophia’ in a ‘fancy piece’ dated 1809 from the Metropolitan’s untitled pamphlet (Supplementary Fig. 5a–b). A figure from plate 19 of Designs of Modern Costume has two palmette ornaments on the triangular corners of her overshirt (Fig. 6; see Supplementary Fig. 19 for a detail).Footnote 50 On plate 6, an additional pair of even more ornate palmette ornaments are on the stole with which the child on the left is playing (Fig. 7; see Supplementary Fig. 20a for whole engraving). Here, the palmette ornaments have vegetable tendrils that grow out of the bottom of the lyre shape surrounding the lower palmette. A figure in the most striking of the scenes in Designs of Modern Costume (Fig. 8 and detail in Supplementary Fig. 21, standing woman on the right, who is shown from back view) wears a hip-length overgarment with a palmette ornament. The title of this engraving, ‘LE BEAU MONDE’,Footnote 51 suggests that the ladies in the volume’s etchings, attired in the Greek manner, represent ideal dress for members of high society and fashion, who should be clothed in such true Neoclassical garb.
The same ornament with palmettes can be seen in other examples of contemporary fashion, for example, on an 1807 portrait of Princess Mary by international portrait painter Peter Edward Stroehling (Supplementary Fig. 23a–b). Here the ornament appears twice on the corners of red drapery that the princess leans on with her right hand.Footnote 52 A fashion plate for Lady’s Magazine of July 1808 (Supplementary Fig. 24a–b)Footnote 53 shows a woman (on the viewer’s left) who strikes a similar pose and wears a similar overgarment with the same palmette ornament as the lady in ‘LE BEAU MONDE’ (Supplementary Fig. 21). Not only does this attest to the compatibility of the ornament on Neoclassical dress, but also suggests that Moses had a hand in the design of the fashion plate. In fact, it is possible that he designed a series of fashion plates in the popular Lady’s Magazine between the years of 1807 and 1809.Footnote 54 There are compositional similarities between several of the fashion plates of these years and Moses’s fashion publications.Footnote 55 Moreover, this series of plates shows several ornaments that were used by Hope in Costume of the Ancients and by Moses in his publications, more examples of which will be shown below. Lady’s Magazine would have reached a wide readership in fashionable society and would, therefore, have disseminated these design motifs to a large audience.Footnote 56
Ancient Decorative Motifs Found on Hope’s Priestess and Neoclassical Dress
In the next part of the argument, other pattern motifs that Hope introduced to his draped figures through his study of ancient vases will be examined. Hope achieved a complex combination of patterns on a figure from Costume of the Ancients that is based on a marble statue. The figure is known from Hope’s preliminary drawing (Fig. 9a–b and Supplementary Fig. 26a), Moses’s final drawing (Fig. 10) and engravings from both editions of Costume of the Ancients (Supplementary Fig. 27a–b). Hope’s figure and the statue on which it is based (see Supplementary Fig. 28a–c) are draped in a peplos with an overfoldFootnote 57 and a veil, or epiblema (ἐπίβλημα in Greek);Footnote 58 the raised left hand of the statue once held a sceptre. The statue is now believed by archaeologists to be a goddess, possibly Hera or Demeter.Footnote 59 Moses’s final drawing and the corresponding plates in Costume of the Ancients are erroneously labelled ‘Priestess from a statue in the Giustiniani gallery’, but for simplicity’s sake, Hope’s identification will be retained here and the figure will be referred to as ‘Priestess’ going forward. Hope’s drawing was possibly derived from an engraving in Galleria Giustiniana (Supplementary Fig. 26b), a seventeenth-century publication known to have been in Hope’s library.Footnote 60 Note how Hope eliminated the base of the statue that is included in the seventeenth-century engraving in his rendering. Neither the engraving of the figure, nor the statue itself, exhibits any patterns on the drapery.
Although Hope’s drawing also appears to the naked eye to lack any patterns, two infrared photographs (Fig. 9a–b) reveal traces of graphite embedded deep in the laid paper of the drawing. These faded traces reveal Hope’s experiments with different patterns, both on the drapery and on both sides of the figure. A comparison of Hope’s preliminary drawing with Moses’s final drawing (Fig. 10) demonstrates that the patterns selected for the final drawing are pencilled in on the figure’s veil, her peplos’s overfold, and the viewer’s lower left side of the peplos’s skirt. The patterns that Moses copied from Hope’s drawing were then transferred to Moses’s nearly identical engravings in both the 1809 and 1812 editions of Costume of the Ancients (Supplementary Fig. 27a–b).Footnote 61 Compared with Moses’s final drawing (Fig. 10), the patterns in his corresponding plates from Costume of the Ancients are engraved more precisely, which accents their importance and legibility. That Hope felt free to add such borders to the statue makes sense when the fact that he knew ancient statues were fitted out with such ornaments is considered.
The infrared photos reveal how Hope arrived at his combination of patterns. The photograph of the lower part of Hope’s preliminary drawing no. 51 (Fig. 9b) shows how he experimented with the motifs for the largest decorated zone on the Priestess’s drapery, that at the base of her skirt. Outside the figure in the lower right section of the drawing there can be discerned a design with a single chain of open lotus buds and palmettes. A double chain of lotus buds and palmettes can be found to the viewer’s left of the Priestess’s skirt, and in two versions on the skirt itself. The patterns on the viewer’s left side of the skirt itself match all the patterns in Moses’s final drawing (Fig. 10) and on his engravings (Supplementary Fig. 27a–b), so these are the patterns that will be traced here. They consist of a band of three lines on each side of a double chain of open lotus buds and palmettes, with a row of stars at the top.
An Attic red-figure volute krater once in Hope’s collection (Supplementary Fig. 29) is one possible source for the chain of lotus buds and palmettes. In Moses’s engraving of the krater from his Collection of Antique Vases of 1814 (see Supplementary Fig. 30),Footnote 62 he renders the single chain of lotus buds and palmettes in a very similar manner to the double chain in his engravings of the Priestess (Supplementary Fig. 27a–b), except that the chains are more compressed on the skirt of the Priestess. Particularly similar are the shapes of the open lotus buds, and the simple double spirals that link the lotus buds to the palmettes at their bases.
The authors have been unable to find ornamental bands of stars flanking figural panels on Greek vases that resemble the starry band on the Priestess’s skirt. However, scattered stars do decorate the drapery of figures from vases. An example is this figure of ‘Jupiter from a greek vase’, as illustrated in Costume of the Ancients (Supplementary Fig. 31a–b).Footnote 63 Here, rather than being limited to a band, stars cover the whole sleeved undergarment of Jupiter. The vase that Hope’s Jupiter is based on formed part of Hamilton’s second vase collection and was illustrated in Tischbein’s publication of the collection (Supplementary Fig. 33). Students of Tischbein are known to have made tracings from the vases themselves, as a basis for drawings for some of the engravings in Tischbein’s publication, probably this one among them. Later engravings for the publication were executed by a ‘skilled engraver’, who took the outlines ‘directly from the vases’.Footnote 64 Thus, their faithfulness to the originals was ensured. Hope’s rendering shows that he copied most of the patterns in his Jupiter from Tischbein’s engraving.Footnote 65
The lower border on the overfold of the Priestess’s peplos, again not included in Hope’s statuary source, is a bead-and-reel pattern (see the infrared photo in Fig. 9a). This motif is often rendered in three dimensions in Greek architectural mouldings. Hope owned many books on ancient architecture in his library;Footnote 66 for example, a plate in Hope’s copy of Charles Heathcote Tatham’s Etchings, representing the best examples of ancient ornamental architecture; drawn from the originals in Rome could have served as a model (see Supplementary Fig. 35a–c).Footnote 67 The bead-and-reel pattern is also found decorating Greek vases, including the area just beneath the lip of the famous Apulian red-figure volute krater called the Hamilton Vase, which was purchased by the British Museum in 1772 as part of the first vase collection of Sir William Hamilton (Supplementary Fig. 36a–b). Hope could have studied the vase itself, and he would have seen the reproductions of it in his copy of Hamilton’s and antiquarian Baron Pierre François Hugues d’Hancarville’s Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Hon. Wm. Hamilton (see Supplementary Fig. 37).Footnote 68 The above-mentioned etching with Juno and Minerva (Supplementary Fig. 13b) from Flaxman’s Iliad Compositions has a bead-and-reel ornament on the goddesses’s chariot box, and is another possible source for the pattern.
Above the bead and reel on the Priestess’s overfold is an upright chain of closed lotus buds, with dots above them. This same pattern appears, for example, with the lotus buds pointing downwards, on the neck of an Attic red-figure column krater once in Hope’s collection (Supplementary Fig. 39a–b).Footnote 69 This krater has dots within the tendrils that link the lotus buds. In his drawing (Fig. 9a), Hope may have inverted such a chain of lotus buds to an upright position and left the dots in the same place, which was now above the buds. Besides Hope’s vase, there are also some splendid examples of column kraters with the same pattern from the first Hamilton vase collection, now in the British Museum. Moses was clearly interested in one example, Supplementary Fig. 42, as an 1811 engraving of it was included in his Collection of Antique Vases of 1814 (Supplementary Fig. 43a).Footnote 70 Again the neck of the krater has the pattern of closed lotus buds with dots within the linking tendrils. Hope could also have derived the pattern from the engraving of the same vase in his copy of d’Hancarville’s corpus (see Supplementary Fig. 43b); here the dotted lotus buds, located in the second position above the figural scene, comprise the largest decorative band.
The motif that decorates the Priestess’s veil is a single row of roughly heart-shaped ivy leaves with dots to signify berries.Footnote 71 The Attic red-figure volute krater discussed above (see Supplementary Fig. 29) provides an example with a carefully painted double chain of ivy leaves flanking a vine. This motif decorates the sides of the vase’s two curling volute-shaped handles. The ivy pattern also appears on the handles of Attic red-figure amphorae. An example, now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Supplementary Fig. 44a–b), was once in Hope’s collection. Alternatively, the ivy pattern on the Priestess’s veil might have been inspired by the ivy pattern on the necks of many South Italian vases, such as an Apulian column krater from the first Hamilton vase collection, now in the British Museum (Supplementary Fig. 45). Hope may have been familiar with this particular Apulian column krater, since engravings of it appeared in d’Hancarville (Supplementary Figs 46–47), and as a separate print in 1811 and then as an illustration in 1814 in Henry Moses’s Collection of Antique Vases (Supplementary Fig. 48). Note how Hope could have appropriated the upper row of ivy leaves on the krater, along with the central berry from the pattern’s clusters of berries.
There are correspondences in decorative motifs and garment type between the scenes in Moses’s fashion publications and the image of the Priestess from Costume of the Ancients, evidence that Moses was deriving features of his ideal modern costumes from his work for Costume of the Ancients. For instance, the stole of the woman on the viewer’s right in plate 9 from Sketches in Outline (Fig. 5) is decorated with the bead-and-reel pattern. In a charming image from Designs of Modern Costume of a mother kissing her child (Supplementary Fig. 49), her overshirt, which is pinned with a broach at the shoulder, closely resembles the overfold of the Priestess’s peplos (Supplementary Fig. 27a–b).Footnote 72 Also, the pattern of the closed lotus buds and dots is present in the same position close to the bottom of the overshirt/overfold in both plates (Supplementary Fig. 49 and the Priestess). Moreover, the closed lotus buds with dots are found on the mother’s sleeve, and the bead-and-reel pattern is at the bottom of her skirt.
The double chain of open lotus buds and palmettes on the base of the Priestess’s dress is reiterated in another Moses etching in Designs of Modern Costume, albeit in a simplified fashion, along the bottom of the skirt of the woman seated on the left (Supplementary Fig. 20a–b). Also, the bead-and-reel pattern decorates the woman’s skirt beneath her knees, as well as the stole with which her child is playing (see Fig. 7 for a detail). In another etching from that publication (Fig. 6; see Supplementary Fig. 19 for detail), Moses may have intended stars to be understood by the cross-shaped ornaments that decorate the overshirt of the mother, who is standing with her child in the centre. Also, on the bottom of her overshirt is the bead-and-reel motif, in the same position as on Hope’s Priestess. Decorating the mother’s right sleeve is the closed lotus bud and dot pattern. Moreover, although ivy motifs (present on the Priestess’s veil) are not evident in Moses’s publications, they are attested on extant garments, such as an example from about 1800 in the collection of the Victoria and Albert Museum (Supplementary Fig. 50).
Features of the Priestess image (Supplementary Fig. 27a–b) and another of Hope’s figures who wears a peplos (Supplementary Fig. 51a) further support the theory that Moses supplied designs to Lady’s Magazine before the publication of the first edition of Costume of Ancients in 1809. In the May 1808 fashion plate (Fig. 11), the hip-length overgarment resembles the overfold of the peplos of the Priestess and of Hope’s ‘Grecian female’ (Supplementary Fig. 51a) in the way that it is pinned at the shoulders and open on the figure’s right side, where the drapery ‘descends in elegant and beautiful folds on each side of the arm’.Footnote 73 There are also similarities in the shared patterns of Hope’s Priestess and the lady in ‘London Fashionable Full Dress’ (Fig. 11); on the latter, a roughly executed double chain of open lotus buds and palmettes appears at the bottom of the skirt, just as in the Priestess’s skirt. Also, the bead-and-reel pattern decorates the bottom of this figure’s overgarment (Fig. 11) in the same position as on the Priestess’s overfold. Above the bead and reel on the fashion plate, there is a single chain of open lotus buds and palmettes. This motif can also be seen in the tiara.Footnote 74 At the neck and on the visible sleeve of the lady’s dress (Fig. 11), there are chains of undefined closed lotus buds that have small circles rather than dots next to them.
Neoclassical Influence on Hope’s Bacchante
As seen above, Hope ornamented figures in Costume of the Ancients that represented specific antiquities with patterns that he derived from Greek vases; those same patterns were used in Neoclassical dress. Hope also combined elements from multiple antiquities in his figures and added details to make his designs fit the contemporary taste in dress. A prime example of this tendency is his ‘Bacchante with the thyrsus’. Both Hope’s preliminary drawing (Supplementary Fig. 52a and Fig. 12a–b) and Moses’s final drawing of this figure (Fig. 13) have survived, and it appeared in both editions of Costume of the Ancients (see Supplementary Fig. 52b).Footnote 75 The Bacchante cannot be traced to a single ancient source and appears to be a composite of several figures, a practice described by Hope in his introduction to Costume of the Ancients:
All account of the authorities on which each of the designs individually rests has been studiously omitted, where, from a great diversity of models having supplied each in a very small proportion the different component parts of a single representation, this account must have become a long and circumstantial treatise.Footnote 76
Features of the Bacchante can be found in antiquities known to Henry Moses through his employment as an engraver of antiquities at the British Museum,Footnote 77 and to Hope through engravings in books from his library. For the pose, thyrsus, and billowing himation of the Bacchante, a possible source of inspiration is a Maenad, illustrated in an 1811 engraving from Moses’s Collection of Antique Vases (Supplementary Fig. 53). The Apulian situla from which the figure is taken formed part of Hamilton’s first vase collection, and has been in the British Museum since 1772 (see Supplementary Fig. 54).Footnote 78 The Bacchante’s belted over-tunic, called an ependytes (ἐπενδύτης in Greek),Footnote 79 is similar to that of the right figure in an unnumbered plate from Tischbein’s vol. 5, which shows the back side of an Attic red-figure skyphos now in Vienna (Supplementary Fig. 55).Footnote 80
Infrared photos of Hope’s preliminary drawing of the Bacchante (Fig. 12a–b) reveal that he made some fundamental changes that served to heighten her Neoclassical aspects. For instance, there is a second head drawn to the upper right of the figure, and unlike the head attached to the figure in Hope’s drawing, it shows grape leaves and berries on the Bacchante’s headband, which is tied over the centre of her forehead. Moses used this alternate design for his final drawing (Fig. 13 and Supplementary Fig. 56c). The alternate design for the head from Hope’s preliminary drawing also adds long ringlets to the hairstyle, with three visible on the left side of the Bacchante’s head, which is turned towards the viewer, and two visible on the right side. This triple-curl hairstyle is seen not only on the ‘Bacchante with the thyrsus’, but also on the ‘Grecian female’ who is shown in a frontal view on plate 34 in the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients (Supplementary Fig. 51a). Hope seems to have copied the latter from a plate from volume 6 of a publication in Hope’s library, Le Antichità di Ercolano esposte (Supplementary Fig. 51b).Footnote 81 It is interesting to note that in both engravings, Hope has lengthened and thickened the curls to be more Neoclassical in style.Footnote 82
A figure in a fashion plate from Lady’s Magazine, August 1808 (Supplementary Fig. 56a–b), has ringlets and a head type that very similar to Moses’s final drawing of the Bacchante (Supplementary Fig. 56c).Footnote 83 This comparison provides further support for the hypothesis that Moses provided drawings for fashion plates in Lady’s Magazine in the period of 1807 to 1809. It is interesting that the stylish triple spiral curl arrangement seen in the fashion plate, which is roughly contemporary with Moses’s drawing, is described as a hairstyle in the Greek manner: ‘Hair dressed in bands, confined with a gold fillet and three spiral curls on each side à la Grec [sic]…’Footnote 84
As can be seen in his final drawing of the Bacchante (Fig. 13), Moses changed the attribute the figure raises in her right hand from a wreath to a Greek kylix, a wine cup. It was likely at Hope’s order that Moses made this substitution. This object is closer to something that would have actually been used in a Neoclassical home. The vessel in Moses’s drawing is similar to one pictured in Hope’s Household Furniture and Interior Decoration (Supplementary Fig. 58a). A comparable kylix-shaped vessel was created by London silversmith Paul Storr in 1809, just two years after the publication of Household Furniture (Supplementary Fig. 58b).Footnote 85
In regard to the patterns on the Bacchante’s drapery, her skirt (the only visible part of her chiton) has two bands of decoration: a meander pattern at the bottom, and above it, a grapevine. The latter can be made out in the infrared photo of the Bacchante’s lower drapery (Fig. 12b). Both motifs can be found, for example, on an unidentified vase in d’Hancarville (Supplementary Fig. 59). A meander pattern decorates the bottom of the skirt of the Maenad who stands with an offering in front of a seated Dionysos; this pattern is in the same position as on Hope’s Bacchante. On the same engraving in d’Hancarville, a grapevine with grape clusters runs all across the top of the scene, forming a kind of canopy. Grapevines normally appear outside of the figures on Greek painted vases,Footnote 86 as in this example, rather than ornamenting a figure’s drapery, as on Hope’s Bacchante. Hope clearly studied this superb engraving from d’Hancarville, since he derived a figure in Costume of the Ancients from the standing Maenad, here identified simply as a ‘Greek female from a fictile vase’ (Supplementary Fig. 60).Footnote 87 Besides the meander, another decorative motif on the Bacchante’s garments can be seen in this figure. The tree-like palmette that runs along the side border of the Bacchante’s over-tunic can be found on the upper border of the Greek female’s skirt.
Next to the tree-like palmettes on the Bacchante’s over-tunic is a border of outlined eggs (also known as the ovolo; see Fig. 12b). This motif extends up above the Bacchante’s belt, and also forms the border of her sleeve (see Supplementary Fig. 52a–b). The outlined egg pattern, alternating with a dart, is a common architectural moulding, which can be found on the same etching by Tatham as the bead-and-reel mouldings mentioned above (see Supplementary Fig. 35a–b). The egg pattern, with dots between the outlined eggs, is used in pattern bands flanking figural scenes on Greek vases (see Supplementary Fig. 62a–b).Footnote 88 Also, the egg pattern, alternating with lines tipped by dots (stylized darts?), appears on the bottom edge of the chiton of Hope’s ‘Jupiter from a greek vase’ (Supplementary Fig. 63a–c).Footnote 89 D’Hancarville’s engraving of the source vase for Hope’s Jupiter (Supplementary Fig. 64a), a lekythos in the British Museum since 1772 (Supplementary Fig. 64b), seemingly provided the inspiration for the egg and dotted line pattern; it is in the same location in both renderings.Footnote 90 The neckline of the chiton of Hope’s Jupiter (Supplementary Fig. 63b) has a border of teardrop shapes (meant to be darts?) with alternating orientations inside of an undulating line, a pattern that is also found on the hem of the Bacchante’s over-tunic (Fig. 12b and Supplementary Fig. 52a–b). This pattern appears to be unique to Hope’s figures.Footnote 91
The final decorative patterns in the Bacchante’s drapery appear on her stole, which takes the form of a loose himation.Footnote 92 These ornaments are stars, similar to those discussed above, and a running spiral pattern on the lower border of the stole (see Hope’s drawing, Fig. 12a–b and Supplementary Fig. 52a); the running spiral was transformed into a wave pattern in Moses’s final drawing and the engravings in Costume of the Ancients (Fig. 13 and Supplementary Fig. 52b).Footnote 93 The running spiral decorates other figures in Costume of the Ancients that are known to be derived from Greek vases, such as the figure of an Amazon (Supplementary Fig. 66).Footnote 94 Aubin-Louis Millin, a friend of Hope, has an engraving of this vase in volume 1 of his publication that is known to have been in Hope’s library: Peintures de vases antiques, vulgairement appelés étrusques (Supplementary Fig. 68).Footnote 95 The Amazon in Hope’s plate can be found in Millin’s engraving on the upper right, combatting a Greek warrior. The running spiral pattern on the short chiton of Hope’s Amazon corresponds to its position on Millin’s engraving.Footnote 96
Several of the pattern motifs that decorate the Bacchante’s drapery were deemed suitable for modern fashionable dress. For example, a running spiral ornaments the over-tunic worn under the vest-like garment in Moses’s 1809 etching of ‘Sophia’ (Supplementary Fig. 5a–b). A fashion plate from Lady’s Magazine of July 1808 (Supplementary Fig. 24a–b) has the running spiral pattern on the left figure’s overgarment, and also has, on the right figure’s overgarment, the meander pattern. A grapevine may be intended by the ‘fancy border’Footnote 97 at the base of the skirt of the left figure in another fashion plate from Lady’s Magazine for April 1808 (Supplementary Fig. 70a–b). The grapevine is definitely attested on contemporary dresses, as on an English embroidered dress of about 1810 (Supplementary Fig. 71). Tiaras and other decorative headpieces featuring grapevines and grape clusters, among other motifs from antiquity such as the Greek meander, wheat, and laurel leaves, were popular in Neoclassical dress (Supplementary Fig. 72).Footnote 98 A pattern that is similar to the eggs and dotted lines on Hope’s Jupiter (Supplementary Fig. 63c) appears in the fashion plate for the May 1807 issue of a competitor of Lady’s Magazine, i.e. La Belle Assemblée (Supplementary Fig. 73). The right figure, in ‘Full Dress’, is described as wearing a robe that is ‘trimmed round the bottom, bosom, and sleeves with an elegant border, composed of the pearl bead, blended with green foil and gold’.Footnote 99
Hope’s Influence on the Dress of His Wife Louisa
In addition to these fashion plates, drapery forms and patterns found in Hope’s undated drawing of the Bacchante are already evident in the world of fashion before the first publication of the figure in the 1809 engraving from Costume of the Ancients. A portrait of Hope’s wife Louisa, executed in 1807 by Sir Martin Archer Shee,Footnote 100 shows her in the role of a Bacchante (Fig. 14 and Supplementary Fig. 74a–b). Hope had married Louisa in the previous year of 1806. His contemporary Washington Irving wrote that she was ‘one of the loveliest women in the kingdom, and one of the reigning deities of fashion’.Footnote 101 Aileen Ribeiro has noted that Louisa’s dress ‘was possibly inspired by the thigh-length tunic and long stole’ of Hope’s Bacchante.Footnote 102 At the same time, like other portraits of Louisa,Footnote 103 this 1807 example exhibits a fusion of elements of Greek costume with fashionable contemporary dress design. The over-tunic in the portrait has been modified to fit Neoclassical fashion by being given the high Empire waistline with a long belt with tassels, and a border of tassels beneath the hem of the garment. Also, the stole appears to be made of rich silk, with borders of gold; in contrast, the stole or himation of the Bacchante would have been made of a thin, less precious fabric, probably linen.Footnote 104 While Louisa’s stole is missing the stars and running spiral design in Hope’s drawing of the Bacchante, the over-tunic has pattern motifs that relate to the Bacchante. The borders on the neck and sleeves of the over-tunic have an undulating line with dots (see Supplementary Fig. 74a), a pattern similar to the Bacchante’s pattern of an undulating line with teardrops on the bottom edge of her over-tunic. The tree-like palmettes on the vertical border of the Bacchante’s over-tunic (Fig. 12b and Supplementary Fig. 52a) are similar to the motif at the hem of Louisa’s over-tunic (Supplementary Fig. 74b), except that here every other tree-like form is surrounded by a border.Footnote 105
Louisa is further linked to the concept of the Bacchante by the previously unidentified antiquities that surround her in the portrait. The marble vase on the upper right (Supplementary Fig. 76a) is the same as one that is illustrated in an 1811 engraving from Moses’s Collection of Antique Vases (Supplementary Fig. 76b).Footnote 106 It is also illustrated in an earlier publication by Piranesi that Hope is known to have owned: Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne ed ornamenti antichi (see Supplementary Fig. 76c).Footnote 107 The vase depicts a maenad and a satyr. It is also likely that the legs and lowered right hand of the statue on the left side of Shee's portrait of Louisa (Fig. 14 and Supplementary Fig. 77a) are those of the so-called ‘Hope Dionysos’, a marble statue once in Hope’s collection and now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (Supplementary Fig. 77b). Hope’s preliminary drawing of the statue survives (Supplementary Fig. 78a). The etching derived from the drawing and executed by Hope is entitled ‘Bacchus from a statue in my possession’, and is only published in the 1812 edition of Costume of the Ancients (Supp. Fig. 78b). Further antiquities connected to Bacchus/Dionysos can be made out in the lower left part of Shee’s portrait of Louisa. In the shadows in front of the statue’s cylindrical base (Fig. 14 and Supplementary Fig. 77a), there is a red-figure volute krater (one of the large vase shapes used by the Greeks to contain wine); and next to the krater on the left, there is a kylix (a Greek wine cup) like that held by Hope’s Bacchante.
In June 1808, a year after the execution of Louisa’s portrait, a similar dress with an over-tunic appeared in Lady’s Magazine (Fig. 15). The standing figure in the fashion plate has an over-tunic that is gathered under the breasts, but lacks a belt as in Louisa’s portrait. Like the portrait, the over-tunic has tassels attached to the hem, and a lower border of tree-like palmettes that here alternate with what may be buds. Also, the long stole is present in both costumes, as it is on Hope’s ‘Bacchante with the thyrsus’. Examples of an over-tunic also appear in Moses’s ‘Sophia’ of 1809 (Supp. Fig. 5a-b), and in Designs of Modern Costume (see the right seated woman with a turned head in Supplementary Fig. 79a–b). As in the fashion plate, these over-tunics are gathered under the breasts but unbelted; that of Sophia even has tassels attached to its hem.
Conclusion
The foregoing review of visual evidence shows Hope working on several fronts to improve the elegance and simplicity of contemporary women’s dress, one of his stated goals in the first edition of Costume of the Ancients, published in 1809. Already in 1807, his hand can be seen in Shee’s portrait of Louisa Hope. Surrounded by antiquities connected with Bacchus, she emerges in a modern-day adaptation of a Bacchante’s costume. Her over-tunic has the form-fitting simplicity of the Greek ependytes in Hope’s ‘Bacchante with the thyrsus’, and like it has pattern bands accenting its borders.
Hope’s figures in the two editions of Costume of the Ancients (1809 and 1812) exemplify the purity of line and elegant simplicity of ancient dress forms and complementary decorative motifs, thereby providing ‘useful hints’ on how women could improve the general design of their clothes. In both editions, Hope added patterns that were not present on the antiquities that were his sources. He appears to have developed these pattern motifs by looking at those used on Greek vases, both on the costumes themselves and in decorative borders. The article has demonstrated how in his preliminary drawings, Hope experimented with different pattern motifs derived from Greek vases, and he invented new ones using elements from Greek vase patterns. Hope’s drawings have been compared with Moses’s final drawings and the corresponding engravings to identify which patterns were then selected for the engravings in both editions of Costume of the Ancients. Specifically, it has been demonstrated how Hope invented a detached palmette ornament for corners of pendent drapery, using bands of palmettes and palmette ornaments as his sources. Another invented pattern was an undulating line enclosing differently oriented teardrop shapes. Chains of closed lotus buds, bands of the bead-and-reel pattern and ornate friezes of open lotus buds and palmettes were utilized nearly unchanged. These handsome patterns were introduced to Hope’s figures in Costume of the Ancients and fittingly accented contemporary female dress, as demonstrated in fashion plates in Lady’s Magazine and in Moses’s fashion publications. Two drapery types found on Greek sculptures and vases were also promoted by Hope and Moses in the same publications: the overfold of the Greek peplos and the rarer over-tunic, the Greek ependytes. In depictions of antiquities in Costume of the Ancients, these overgarments were correctly portrayed, but they were adapted to contemporary costume in the fashion plates and in Moses’s publications with figures in modern costumes à la Grecque; i.e., the overfold that forms part of the Greek peplos became an overshirt that was fastened at the shoulders, and the ependytes, here called an over-tunic, is gathered under the breasts (or belted under the breasts, as in Louisa’s portrait) rather than being belted at the waist.
Louisa’s portrait is the only surviving evidence the authors have found of Hope’s directly influencing contemporary dress to include the ancient drapery forms and patterns highlighted in his Costume of the Ancients. Nonetheless, Hope’s contemporaries believed that he was successful in influencing Neoclassical dress. In her memoirs, Elizabeth Grant suggested that the adoption of Hope’s patterns was widespread, when she recollected that one of her mother’s gowns was ‘white satin trimmed with white velvet, cut in a formal pattern, then quite the rage, a copy from some of the Grecian borders in Mr Hope’s book’.Footnote 108 In Ackermann’s Repository of June 1809, just after the publication of the first edition of Costume of the Ancients, the reviewer presumed to be Beau Brummell attributes ‘the late change in dress principally’ to this handbook.Footnote 109 The review goes on to suggest: ‘It is hoped the publication alluded to [Costume of the Ancients] will become the vade-mecum and toilet companion of every lady distinguished in the circles of fashion’.Footnote 110 If the earlier fashion plates from Lady’s Magazine that exhibit Hope’s patterns and adaptations of his Greek drapery types can be associated with Moses, working under the influence of Hope, then it can be suggested that Brummell felt that the fashion plates, Moses’s Sketches in Outline of 1808, and Costume of the Ancients already had and would continue to have an impact on contemporary fashion.
That Hope’s influence persisted thereafter, as Brummell had hoped, is indicated in an obituary of Hope, written shortly after his death:
In ‘The Costume of the Ancients,’… is displayed a deep research into the arts of antiquity, and a familiarity with all that is graceful and elegant. This work tended greatly to improve the costume of the ladies.Footnote 111
Hope appears to have achieved this success by a seamless merging in Costume of the Ancients of Greek drapery forms and decorative patterns from Greek vases that could be adapted to contemporary fashion. This integration was also manifest in all the fashion publications with which he and Moses were associated and in the dress of his wife Louisa (as revealed in portraits). Thus, Hope should not be dismissed by costume historians as ‘quaint old Hope’.Footnote 112 Instead, he deserves careful study for the complex ways in which he was able to suggest improvement in contemporary dress through its incorporation of Greek designs and echoes of Greek costume.
Notes
The quotation at the beginning of the title of this article is from Thomas Hope, Costume of the Ancients, London, 1809, p. 12.
D. Watkin, Thomas Hope and the Neo-Classical Idea 1769–1831, London, 1968, pp. 1–8.
S. Baumgarten, Le crépuscule néo-classique, Paris, 1958, pp. 25–9.
These albums were sold at the Christie’s sale of Hope’s library on 25 July 1917; see Catalogue of the valuable library of books on architecture, costume, sculpture, antiquities, etc., formed by Thomas Hope, Esq. … which will be sold by auction ... on Wednesday, July 25, 1917 and two following days, Christie, Manson & Woods, London, 1917, p. 40, lots 395–7.
F.-M. Tsigakou, Thomas Hope (1769–1831): Pictures from 18th Century Greece, Athens, 1985.
Thomas Hope, Observations on the Plans and Elevations designed by James Wyatt, Architect, for Downing College, Cambridge; in a letter to Francis Annesley, Esq. M.P., London, 1804, p. 7.
Tsigakou, 18th Century Greece 1985 (n. 5), p. 32.
Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 33, lot 315. For this and other supplementary figures, see https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-022-00619-5.
See Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1); and Thomas Hope, Costume of the Ancients, London, 1812. The figures in the drawings can all be matched up with engravings from one or both editions of Costume of the Ancients; many of these corresponding engravings are signed by Hope as draughtsman. For Hope’s drawings that are discussed in this article, see Figs. 2, 4, 9a–b and 12a–b; and Supplementary Figs 10, 26a, 52a, 67a and 78a).
Seventy-two of the drawings in this album do not correspond to preliminary drawings by Hope, but do match engravings from one or both editions of Costume of the Ancients. Eleven drawings in the album were not reproduced in either edition of Costume of the Ancients. For a breakdown of the drawings by Hope and Moses into groups and subgroups, see F. Van Keuren, ‘Unpublished Drawings by Thomas Hope and Henry Moses in the Gennadius Library, Athens’, Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide, 7, no. 2, Autumn 2008, pp. 139–57 (156–7). http://www.19thc-artworldwide.org/autumn08/89-new-discoveries-unpublished-drawings-by-thomas-hope-and-henry-moses-in-the-gennadius-library-athens.
Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), p. 52 and Hope, Costume 1812 (n. 9), p. 51. For a fuller discussion of the attribution of most of these drawings to Moses, see Van Keuren, ‘Unpublished drawings’ 2008 (n. 10), p. 145. Printmaker Sarah Van Keuren suggested that here Hope is referring to a process whereby Moses first engraved the plates for Costume of the Ancients and then transferred the engraved compositions to copper etching plates, so that the final prints were etchings based on engravings. The authors tested this theory by carefully examining a high-resolution photograph of Supplementary Fig. 75a, which appears to be an etching. In order to confirm the hypothesis, further work is needed on the other plates in Costume of the Ancients.
F. M. O’Donoghue, ‘Moses, Henry (1782?–1870)’, in Dictionary of National Biography, ed. S. Lee, XIII, London, 1909, p. 1076.
George Bryan (‘Beau’) Brummell (attributed), ‘Fashions for Ladies and Gentlemen: General Observations’, in Rudolph Ackermann, publisher, Repository of arts, literature, commerce, manufactures, fashions and politic, London (1809–1828) 1, June 1809, pp. 397–8. For Brummell’s contributions to men’s fashion in the Neoclassical period, see V. Sherrow, Encyclopedia of Hair: A Cultural History, Westport, Conn. and London, 2006, pp. 72-3 (‘Brummell, Beau [1778–1840]’) and 322–3 (‘Regency’).
A. Ribeiro, ‘Fashion à l’Antique: Thomas Hope and Regency Dress’, in Thomas Hope: Regency Designer, exhibition catalogue ed. D. Watkin and P. Hewat-Jaboor, New Haven and London, 2008, pp. 77–89 (p. 89, n. 39).
Henry Moses, Sketches of Modern Conversation and Fashions, Drawn & Engraved by Henry Moses, London, 1 December 1804. There are only two known copies. The one with online photos is at the Minneapolis Institute of Art: https://collections.artsmia.org/search/henry%20moses. Also see Helen Benton Minnich and Edward A. Foster, The Minnich Collection: The Collection of Dwight and Helen Minnich, exhibition catalogue, Minneapolis, 1970, nos. 248–50, pl. 63. The second copy, without online photos, is at the Yale Center for British Art: https://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/3439864.
Laura Callery, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Yale Center, generously provided us with study photographs of their copy.
Under the influence of classical statuary and paintings on vases that were being discovered in archaeological excavations, female dress of the era had low and softly rounded necklines, short sleeves, and high waistlines over column-shaped skirts.This Neoclassical style emphasized the beauty of the body’s natural lines. For in-depth studies of the Neoclassical gown, see H. Davidson, Dress in the Age of Jane Austen: Regency Fashion, Princeton, 2019; and A. Rauser, The Age of Undress: Art, Fashion, and the Classical Ideal in the 1790s, New Haven, 2020.
Henry Moses, Sketches in Outline Drawn and Engraved by Henry Moses, London, February 1808.
The copies are located at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2014.757.4(1-13), https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search#!?searchField=All&sortBy=Relevance&q=2014.757.4&offset=0&perPage=20; and the Yale Center for British Art, Rare Books and Manuscripts NC660 .M67 1808+ Oversize, https://hdl.handle.net/10079/bibid/4286388.
An emphasis on pure outline was commonly employed by Neoclassical artists such as John Flaxman (see Supplementary Fig. 13b); Rauser discusses this in the ‘Outline, “Statue-ness,” and the Corinthian Maid’ section of her chapter 3, pp. 105–17 (see n. 17 for reference).
The compressed proportions of the lady in Supplementary Fig. 3 are similar to those of figures from South Italian vases, as in Supplementary Fig. 16 (with a head to body proportion of about 1/7). The more elongated proportions of the ladies in Supplementary Fig. 2 resemble those of figures from fashion plates, as in this 1805 example from The Lady’s Magazine: ‘Paris Dress’, January 1805, by Henry Mutlow (https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw279577/Paris-Dress-January-1805?LinkID=mp64662&role=art&rNo=4). The very long necks of the ladies in Supplementary Fig. 2 are found in fifteen later drawings attributed to Moses, dated 1818–1836, that are at the Victoria and Albert Museum (https://collections.vam.ac.uk/search/?q=henry%20moses%20drawings&page=1&page_size=15).
The Diary of Joseph Farington, Volume IX, January 1808–June 1809, ed. K. Cave, New Haven and London, 1982, p. 3230.
For the descriptions of all thirteen etchings and photos of five of them, see: https://www.metmuseum.org/search-results#!/search?q=2014.757.4; for photos of five more etchings, which are not connected to the pertinent descriptions, see: https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/736225.
For a later republication of one of these etchings, see Supplementary Figs. 6a–b.
Henry Moses, Designs of Modern Costume Engraved for Thomas Hope of Deepdene, London, 1812. There are two known copies of this publication, one in a private collection and the other with an undetermined current location (A. Ribeiro, Hope: Regency Designer 2008 [n. 14], catalogue no. 111, pp. 481–2 n. 1). Neither was available for study or photography, so the reproduction of one of these copies was consulted (Henry Moses, Designs of Modern Costume Engraved for Thomas Hope of Deepdene, London, 1812, with introduction by J. L. Nevinson, London, 1973), and identical etchings from Moses’s two publications of 1823 (see Supplementary Fig. 6a and n. 29 below) were used in this article as illustrations.
A. Ribeiro, Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), catalogue no. 111, pp. 480–82.
These nine etchings have characters from classical mythology, literature and history, hence the term ‘fancy’. For the term ‘fancy pieces’, see A. Ribeiro, Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), catalogue no. 112, p. 480.
On the untitled pamphlet, see The Metropolitan Museum of Art 60.611.111(1–9), https://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/354307.
A. Ribeiro, Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), catalogue no. 112, pp. 480–82. Several other illustrations in this article come from a less deluxe edition of the same 29 etchings, also by Moses and believed to have been published in the same year of 1823, called Designs of Modern Costume, &c, on 29 plates, London [1823?].
Thomas Hope, Household Furniture and Interior Decoration, executed from Designs by Thomas Hope, London, 1807. Watkin, Neo-Classical Idea 1968 (n. 2), has a chart on ‘Sources for Designs of Modern Costume (1812) in Household Furniture (1807)’, p. 255, Appendix D.
A similar Hope settee survives today in a private collection, and was included in the Hope exhibition of 2008 (no. 81). See Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), pp. 402–3.
For Hope’s Greek vases, see E. M. W. Tillyard, The Hope Vases: A Catalogue and a Discussion of The Hope Collection of Greek Vases with an Introduction on the History of the Collection and on Late Attic and South Italian Vases, Cambridge, 1923; for Hope’s sculpture collection, see G. B. Waywell, The Lever and Hope Sculptures, Berlin, 1986. David Watkin (Neo-Classical Idea 1968 [n. 2], p. 36) estimates that Hope displayed over five hundred vases in three rooms in his Duchess-Street mansion, which are illustrated in Hope, Furniture 1807 (n. 30), pls. 3–5, https://archive.org/details/gri_33125011182512/page/n35/mode/2up. Hope’s friend Aubin-Louis Millin stated that Hope owned altogether over 1,500 vases; see Monumens antiques, inédits ou nouvellement expliqués, vol. 2, Paris, 1806, p. 15.
See the anonymous obituary for Hope, ‘Thomas Hope, Esq. F.R.S. & S.A.’, The Gentleman’s Magazine and Historical Chronicle, vol. 101, pt. 1, April 1831, 368–70 (369): ‘The figures [in the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients]… were chiefly selected from fictile vases (many of them in Mr. Hope’s own collection) …’ For a recent survey of patterns on Greek vases and the scholarly literature on them, see I. Šmulíková, ‘Ornament on Greek vases from Archaic to Classical period: current state of research’, Bachelor Thesis, Charles University, Prague, 2022 (https://dspace.cuni.cz/handle/20.500.11956/171943).
Hope, Furniture 1807 (n. 30), p. 52. See William Hamilton and Pierre François Hugues d’Hancarville, Collection of Etruscan, Greek and Roman Antiquities from the Cabinet of the Hon. Wm. Hamilton, 4 vols., Naples, 1766–1767; Giovanni Battista Passeri, Picturae Etruscorum in vasculis : nunc primum in unum collectae explicationibus, et dissertationibus inlustratae, vol. 1, Rome, 1767; and William Hamilton, Collection of engravings from ancient vases mostly of pure Greek workmanship discovered in sepulchres in the kingdom of the Two Sicilies: but chiefly in the neighbourhood of Naples during the course of the years MDCCLXXXIX and MDCCLXXXX now in the possession of Sir Wm. Hamilton, 4 vols. published and vol. 5 of unpublished plates, Wilhelm Tischbein, [Naples], 1791–1795. The Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4) shows that that Hope owned all three of these publications: p. 39, lots 386 and 387; p. 59, lot 590.
Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), p. 40. An examination of Hope’s renderings of vases in Costume of the Ancients shows just how important outlines were to him (see Supplementary Fig. 8a–b). In the first edition of Costume of the Ancients, he illustrates nine shapes of Greek vases by outline alone; only in the second edition of Costume of the Ancients (n. 9) does he add interior decoration within the same vases’s outlined shapes.
Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), p. 53. Hope generally promoted an emphasis on outlines, both in drawings and in prints. In an article of May 2, 1807, Hope commented on the ‘inferior merits of effect of light and shade, and of brilliancy of colouring’, while praising ‘the higher beauties of a correct drawing, and a sublime composition’ (Thomas Hope, untitled article, The Artist, no. 8, 2 May 1807, p. 3; https://archive.org/details/artistcollection00hoar/page/n151/mode/2up). For discussions of Hope’s promotion of outline drawings and engravings in the context of contemporary design theory, see A. H. Cohen, ‘Domestic utility and useful lines: Jean-Charles Krafft’s and Thomas Hope’s outlines,’ Journal of Art Historiography, 9, December 2013, pp. 1–20; and by the same author, ‘Lines of Utility: Outlines, Architecture, and Design in Britain, c. 1800’, PhD Dissertation, Princeton University, 2014, pp. 92–137.
Histoire de l’art chez les anciens, par Winkelmann; tradiut de l’allemand, vol. 1, Paris, 1802, p. 304. This edition can be found in Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 56, lot 564.
MS 3782/12/50/161, Library of Birmingham (Archivist Peter Doré kindly transcribed and photographed the letter); see also Watkin, Neo-Classical Idea 1968 (n. 2), pp. 198–9.
For a general discussion of the himation, see M. M. Lee, Body, Dress, and Identity in Ancient Greece, Cambridge, UK, 2015, pp. 113–16.
Ibid., pp. 100–110.
The 1812 engraving (Supplementary Fig. 11b) is signed ‘Drawn by Tho.s Hope’ and ‘Engraved by H. Moses', reinforcing our attribution of the matching drawings to Hope and Moses.
For a discussion and illustrations of the bronze statue, along with the 1734 engraving that appears to be Hope’s exact source, see Van Keuren, ‘Unpublished Drawings’ 2008 (n. 10), pp. 148–50.
Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), p. 29.
The drawing has a watermark of 1804, the earliest watermark found on Hope’s drawings. No final drawing of this figure by Moses survives.
An Attic red-figure neck amphora (Supplementary Fig. 13a), once in Hope’s collection and now at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, may have inspired him to include the small palmette under the lyre border; under each handle, flanking the figural scenes, is a pair of opposed palmettes inside lyre shapes, with a small palmette placed above the upper lyre. On the amphora, see the Beazley Archive Pottery Database, no. 213475 (http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/3A9225A7-5255-40D2-B8EA-CF47532132B2). For discussion of this type of palmette ornament, see P. Jacobsthal, Ornamente griechischer Vasen, Berlin, 1927, pp. 142–3 and pl. 105a–b. Another variation of the motif can be found in the etching ‘Juno and Minerva Going to Assist the Greeks’ (Supplementary Fig. 13b), which is signed by Thomas Piroli and is from The Iliad of Homer Engraved From The Compositions of Iohn Flaxman R·A· Sculptor, London, 1805, pl. 16. Here, the central lyre shapes in the drapery corners in the overfold of Juno’s peplos (see n. 57 below) lack palmettes. Hope owned Flaxman’s Iliad Compositions of 1805 (see Catalogue library of Hope 1917 [n. 4], p. 37, lots 363–4), and also original drawings by Flaxman for this publication (Catalogue library of Hope 1917, p. 37, lot 365). For Hope’s relationship with Flaxman, see D. Bindman, ‘Thomas Hope’s Modern Sculptures: “a zealous and liberal patronage of its contemporary professors” ’, in Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), pp. 130–49 (131–5).
For Hope’s purchase in 1801 of about 700 vases from Hamilton’s second collection, acquired by Hamilton in Naples between 1789 and 1790 while he was the British envoy there, see: I. Jenkins, ‘The Past as a Foreign Country: Thomas Hope’s Collection of Antiquities’, in Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), pp. 107–29 (120–121); and Watkin, Neo-Classical Idea 1968 (n. 2), pp. 35–6 and 106.
The German painter Wilhelm Tischbein was the director of the Neapolitan Academy of Fine Arts; see I. Jenkins and K. Sloan, Vases & Volcanoes: Sir William Hamilton and his Collection, exhibition catalogue, London, 1996, pp. 52–3.
The drawing can be attributed to Moses on the basis of the handwriting style. There is no surviving preliminary drawing by Hope of this figure. A vase once in Hope’s collection (Supplementary Fig. 16) was the source for this figure; her himation lacks the palmette ornament.
Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), p. 12.
The term overshirt is used here because this is one of the ‘peplos-like draperies attached to the bodice of the dress’ that Ribeiro describes (‘Fashion à l’Antique’ 2008, [n. 14], p. 83). What is called here an overgarment is a longer, hip-length ‘peplos-like’ drapery. Unlike the peplos’s overfold (see Supplementary Fig. 27a–b), such Neoclassical garments are not part of the underlying dress.
Except for the two theatre box scenes (see Supplementary Fig. 6b), ‘LE BEAU MONDE’ and the other etchings in Designs of Modern Costume (1812; n. 25) are believed to reproduce rooms and furniture from Hope’s mansion on Duchess Street; see Watkin, Neo-Classical Idea 1968 (n. 2), pp. 52, 219 and 255, Appendix D. The room depicted in Fig. 8 may be based on the Picture Gallery in Hope’s Duchess-Street mansion (see Supplementary Fig. 22).
On the portrait, see O. Millar, The Later Georgian Pictures in the Collection of Her Majesty The Queen, London, 1969, pp. 118–19 no. 1097, pl. 240; and R. Lyons, ‘Princely splendour and posterity: George IV’s patronage and display of portraiture,’ in George IV: Art & Spectacle, exhibition catalogue ed. K. Heard and K. Jones, London, 2019, pp. 50–2, Fig. 3.8B, and pp. 247–8. Unlike Hope, Stroehling may have lacked easy access to Greek vases. Thus, he may have looked at the Piroli etching mentioned above (Supplementary Fig. 13b) or Piroli’s earlier version from the Rome, 1793 edition (The Iliad Of Homer Engraved by Thomas Piroli From The Compositions of Iohn Flaxman Sculptor, Rome, 1793, pl. 12 [https://gallica.bnf.fr/iiif/ark:/12148/btv1b8457384b/f21/full/full/0/native.jpg]); Stoehling could have decided to fill in the empty lyre shape with a palmette. On the immediate fame of the 1793 edition of Flaxman’s Iliad Compositions, see S. Symmons, Flaxman and Europe: The Outline Illustrations and their Influence, New York and London, 1984, pp. 104–5 and 110.
John Wheble, publisher, The Lady's Magazine; or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement, London, 1770–1847.
For a valuable discussion of Lady’s Magazine (n. 53), see J. Batchelor, ‘ “Connections, which are of service... in a more advanced age”: The Lady's Magazine, Community, and Women's Literary Histories’, in Women in Anglo-American Periodicals, Tulsa Studies in Women’s Literature, 30.2, Fall 2011, pp. 245–67. See also Prof. Batchelor’s blog (https://www.jenniebatchelor.net/blog). In our correspondence, Prof. Batchelor observed in an email to the authors that the fashion plates from these years are stylistically similar to each other but not to those that came before or after, which suggests they were designed by one artist.
See, for instance, a plate from Moses’s 1804 publication Sketches of Modern Conversation and Fashion (Supplementary Fig. 2), a plate from his 1808 publication Sketches in Outline (Supplementary Fig. 3), and a March 1807 fashion plate from Lady’s Magazine (Supplementary Fig. 25a–b). Aileen Ribeiro has suggested that Moses designed the comparable fashion plates (‘Fashion à l’Antique’ 2008, [n. 14], p. 80). Ribeiro’s supposition is supported by the design of the couches that the ladies sit on in Supplementary Figs. 3 and 25a–b, which ultimately derives from Hope’s furniture (Supplementary Fig. 7b).
Batchelor, ‘Lady’s Magazine’ 2011 (n. 54), p. 247, states regarding the circulation of the magazine that there are ‘estimates ranging from 10,000 to 16,000 copies per month’.
Although there is disagreement regarding its accuracy, the term peplos (πέπλος in Greek) is commonly used today by archaeologists and costume historians to signify the type of dress with an overfold that the figure wears. It is believed to have been made from one piece of fabric, and is pinned at the shoulders. In the introduction to Costume of the Ancients, Hope used the equivalent Latin term peplum, but stated that it ‘as well in its texture as in its shape, seemed to answer our shawl’ (Hope, Costume 1809 [n. 1], pp. 26–8). For a recent discussion of the peplos, with citations of earlier literature, see Lee, Ancient Greece 2015 (n. 39), pp. 100–106.
L. Llewellyn-Jones, Aphrodite’s Tortoise: The Veiled Woman of Ancient Greece, Swansea, UK, 2003, p. 26.
The most recent discussion of the statue is by Laura Buccino, in The Torlonia Marbles. Collecting Masterpieces, exhibition catalogue ed. S. Settis and C. Gasparri, Rome, 2021, p. 243, no. 65.
See Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 38, lot 370.
Both engravings are signed by Hope as the draughtsman (‘Drawn by T.H.’ in the 1809 edition and ‘Drawn by Tho.s Hope’ in the 1812 edition), and by Moses as the engraver (‘Engraved by H. Moses’ in both editions). The signatures support our attribution of the two surviving drawings to Hope and Moses.
Henry Moses, A Collection of Antique Vases, Altars, Paterae, Tripods, Candelabra, Sarcophagi, London, 1814, pl. 16. A number of Moses’s engravings were published separately on 1 October 1811, before being incorporated in the 1814 publication. See, for example, Supplementary Fig. 48, that became pl. 17 in Moses’s Collection of Antique Vases; and Supplementary Figs 53 and 76b, which retained the date of 1 October 1811 after they became, respectively, pls 9 and 16 in Collection of Antique Vases.
The engravings of this figure in the 1809 and 1812 editions of Costume of the Ancients are identical, other than the form of Hope’s signature as draughtsman. Moses’s final drawing (Supplementary Fig. 32), no doubt based on Hope’s lost preliminary drawing, survives.
Vases & Volcanoes 1996 (n. 47), p. 55.
It is interesting that, although the commentary for Tischbein’s engraving identifies this sceptre-bearing figure correctly as Lycian King Iobates (Tischbein [n. 34], vol. 1, 1791, p. 48), Hope chose to call him Jupiter instead. The vase on which Tischbein’s engraving was based was among the third of Hamilton’s second collection that was lost at sea in December 1798 in the wreck of the HMS Colossus. However, between 1975 and 1979, an underwater excavation recovered many fragments of the lost vases (now in the British Museum). See Supplementary Fig. 34 for an image of the recovered fragments from this Apulian red-figure column krater that can be matched up with Tischbein’s plate. In 1801, Hope purchased the surviving two thirds of Hamilton’s second vase collection; see n. 46.
Hope’s Historical Essay on Architecture, 3 vols., London, 1835–1836, https://catalog.hathitrust.org/Record/008882632, was published posthumously. It includes chapters on Greek and Roman architecture.
C. H. Tatham, Etchings, representing the best examples of ancient ornamental architecture; drawn from the originals in Rome, and other parts of Italy, during the years 1794, 1795, and 1796, London, 1803, pl. 1; that this publication was in Hope’s library is attested by its inclusion in Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 62, lot 624 (first item).
D’Hancarville (n. 34), vol. 1, pl. 55. The bead-and-reel pattern was considered important enough to be copied in the Wedgwood version of the Hamilton Vase (see Supplementary Fig. 38).
Hope’s ‘Greek warrior’ from Costume of the Ancients was derived from this same vase, so he clearly studied it (see Supplementary Fig. 40). Besides being able to work from the vase itself, Hope could have derived this figure from an engraving of it in Tischbein (n. 34), vol. 1, 1791, pl. 14; or Thomas Kirk, Outlines from the figures and compositions upon the Greek, Roman, and Etruscan vases of the late Sir William Hamilton; with engraved borders, London, 1804, pl. 42 (see Supplementary Fig. 41). Like Tischbein’s corpus, Kirk’s Outlines was a publication owned by Hope; see Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), pp. 31, lot 294 and 36, lot 344). However, for the chain of lotus buds, Hope would have needed to look at the vase itself, or another vase with the same pattern.
That the engraving was created in 1811 is demonstrated by two separately published, dated examples of the same engraving at the British Museum: I, 8.38 (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_I-8-38) and I, 8.39 (https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_I-8-39). Both engravings have the inscription ‘Published by H. Moses, Oct. 1 1811’.
On the heart-shaped variant of ivy seen here, the Hedera helix poetarum, see C. Eichberger, M. Sigl and H. Rühfel, ‘Trees and Shrubs on Classical Greek Vases’, Bocconea 21, 2007, pp. 117–30 (120–21): https://www.herbmedit.org/bocconea/21-117.pdf.
On the term overshirt, see n. 50 above. It can also be seen in these additional etchings in Designs of Modern Costume: Fig. 6 and Supplementary Figs 19–20.
Commentary on the fashion plate, entitled ‘London Fashions’, Lady’s Magazine (n. 53), 39, May 1808, p. 216; this commentary also mentions that the drapery was fastened on each shoulder by a ‘gold broach’. Ribeiro, ‘Fashion à l’Antique’ 2008 (n. 14), p. 80 and Fig. 5–4, compares the fashion plate to Hope, Costume 1812 (n. 9), pl. 63, https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=njp.32101075450112&view=2up&seq=201. Like the plate that Ribeiro cites, Hope’s ‘Grecian female’ (Supplementary Fig. 51a) is fastening her overfold on her right shoulder; a broach is visible on her left shoulder. In the text that precedes the plates in Costume of the Ancients, Hope describes the overfold not as being part of the peplos, but as being a ‘species of bib [that] seems to have been composed of a square piece of stuff, in form like our shawls or scarfs, folded double…; and [that] was worn with the doubled part upwards, and the edge or border downwards, next to the zone or girdle’ (Hope, Costume 1809 [n. 1], p. 26).
For the same pattern on a tiara/diadem in Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), see pl. 127: https://archive.org/details/costumeofancient02hope/page/n101/mode/2up. On the female diadem (στεφάνη in Greek) in Greek literature and art, see Llewellyn-Jones, Veiled Woman 2003 (n. 58), pp. 220–221, fig. 147. For preserved Greek diadems in gold, see D. Williams and J. Ogden, Greek Gold: Jewelry of the Classical World, exhibition catalogue, New York, 1994, nos. 44, 62, 137, 168 and 169.
Hope’s drawing does not have a watermark with a date, but it does have the letters G R below a crest, which are partially visible in Fig. 12b. The letters G R stand for George Rex, i.e. George III, who ruled from 1760 to 1820; see J. La Rue, ‘Watermarks and Musicology’, Journal of Musicology, 18 no. 2, Spring 2001, 313–43 (329-30).
Hope, Costume 1809 (n. 1), p. 11.
See Lucy Peltz, ‘Moses, Henry (1781/1782–1870)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 10 October 2019 (https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-19394?rskey=nK8Cs1&result=1): ‘Thomas Dodd’s manuscripts record that Moses was one of the engravers attached to the British Museum’.
The situla is illustrated in d’Hancarville vol. 2, 1767 (n. 34), pls. 49–51, but the back side with the Maenad is not shown.
For the term over-tunic in relation to the Bacchante, see Ribeiro, ‘Fashion à l’Antique’ 2008 (n. 14), pp. 79 and 83. On the ependytes, see M. C. Miller, Athens and Persia in the Fifth Century B. C.: A study in cultural receptivity, Cambridge, UK, 1997, pp. 170–183.
For photos of the skyphos in Vienna, the Kunsthistorisches Museum 382, see the Beazley Archive Pottery Database no. 7023: http://www.beazley.ox.ac.uk/record/3438D8D8-977E-49A0-B4C3-2FEF8B2830F3.
See Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 15 lot 136. The statue on which the plate in Supplementary Fig. 51b is based is one of five bronze women, possibly water nymphs, wearing the peplos, from the Villa of the Papyri, Herculaneum, now Museo Archeologico Nazionale di Napoli 5619, 1st C BC/AD (Supp. Fig. 57). See K. Lapatin, Buried by Vesuvius: The Villa dei Papiri at Herculaneum, exhibition catalogue ed. K. Lapatin, Los Angeles, 2019, nos 20-21, pp. 172–5.
For more on Neoclassical hairstyles, see Sherrow, Hair 2006 (n. 13), pp. 322–3 (‘Regency’), where ‘earlocks -- curled locks of hair in front of each ear’ are discussed.
Note also the presence of Hope’s bead-and-reel pattern on the border of the right figure’s long, vest-like garment.
‘London Fashionable Dresses’, Lady’s Magazine (n. 53), 39, August 1808, p. 352.
On Storr’s commissions from Hope, see C. Hartop, Art in Industry: The Silver of Paul Storr, Cambridge, England, 2015, pp. 41–3.
See Eichberger, ‘Trees and Shrubs’ 2007 (n. 71), pp. 126–8.
Hope’s engraving does not appear in the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients. The 1812 engraving in Supplementary Fig. 60 is signed by Hope as draughtsman and Moses as engraver. Hope’s preliminary drawing (no. 84, Supplementary Fig. 61a) and Moses’s final drawing (no. 24, Supplementary Fig. 61b) survive. Hope closely replicated the Maenad’s costume, including its patterns, along with the kantharos (a deep wine cup) held in her right hand.
The engraving in Supplementary Fig. 62a is from Passeri, Picturae in vasculis 1767, a three-volume reference that Hope owned in his library (n. 34).
This figure is signed on the lower left ‘Drawn & Engraved by H. Moses’.
Note that Hope has changed the identity of the seated figure from Dionysos with a thyrsus to Jupiter with a sceptre.
The motif may have been suggested, though, by the undulating lines with rough dart-like shapes beneath them that comprise the lower pattern on Dionysos’s vest in Supplementary Fig. 64a.
Compare the himation on the left arm of the Maenad in Supplementary Figs 53–54.
The running spiral is here defined as an openwork pattern of linked spirals, while the wave pattern is like a series of connected crests of waves that are filled in at the base. A Paestan bell krater once in Hope’s collection (Supplementary Fig. 65) may have inspired Hope to instruct Moses to replace the running spiral with a wave pattern.
The engraving does not appear in the 1809 edition of Costume of the Ancients. Although the 1812 engraving of the Amazon is unsigned, a preliminary drawing by Hope (no. 3, Supplementary Fig. 67a) and a final drawing by Moses (no. 3, with his handwritten label, Supplementary Fig. 67b) show that Hope designed it and Moses executed it.
Aubin-Louis Millin, Peintures de Vases Antiques Vulgairement appelés étrusques tirées de différentes collections et gravées par A. Clener, accompagnées d'explications par A. L. Millin, Membre de l'Institut et de La Légion d'Honneur, publiées par M. Dubois Maisonneuve, vol. 1, Paris, 1808, pl. 61; see Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 22, lot 211.
According to Frank Brommer, this vase is now in the Louvre and is a bell krater (Konkordanzlisten zu alter Vasenliteratur, Marburg, 1979, p. 110 no. 61). The vase is also an unpublished and unnumbered plate in vol. 5 of Tischbein (n. 34; see Supplementary Fig. 69).
‘Fashionable Evening Dresses’, Lady’s Magazine (n. 53), 39, April 1808, pp. 160–61 (161).
N. Hague, Combs and Hair Accessories, Cambridge, 1985, p. 13; and G. Munn, Tiaras: Past and Present, London, 2006, pp. 39–45. Ornamented tiaras also frequently featured cameos in various materials, including shell and Wedgwood jasperware. Tiaras with various motifs are worn by several females in the plates illustrated here from Moses’s Sketches in Outline 1808 (n. 18), and his Modern Costume 1812 (n. 25); see Figs 5, 6 and 8 and Supplementary Figs 4, 5a–b, 20a–b, 49 and 79a.
John Bell, publisher, ‘English Costume’, La Belle Assemblée or, Bell's Court and Fashionable Magazine Addressed Particularly to the Ladies, London (1806–1832), 2, May 1807, p. 273. The egg pattern is not picked up in Lady’s Magazine (n. 53) itself.
See Daniella Ben-Aire, Hope: Regency Designer 2008 (n. 14), catalogue no. 3, pp. 270–72; and Alexander Bagnall, with Foreword by Philip Hewat-Jaboor, The Deepdene: A Landscape Rediscovered, Dorking, 2019, 17, fig. 10.
Pierre M. Irving, The Life and Letters of Washington Irving, vol. 2, New York, 1864, p. 84.
Ribeiro, ‘Fashion à l’Antique’ 2008 (n. 14), p. 79.
Ibid., figs 5–8, 5–18 and 5–19. Ribeiro’s fig. 5–8 is actually a miniature enamel on copper by Henry Bone after a lost oil by George Dawe. Bone’s measured drawing of the portrait survives at the National Portrait Gallery, London: https://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/mw120060/Louisa-ne-Beresford-later-Hope-Viscountess-Beresford?LinkID=mp06857&role=art&rNo=17. The portrait is also known through a mezzotint copy by George Dawe’s brother Henry Dawe, an example of which is at the British Museum: https://www.britishmuseum.org/collection/object/P_1930-0414-94. George Dawe executed a second, surviving oil of Louisa and her two sons, now at the University of Nottingham: https://www.artuk.org/discover/artworks/mrs-thomas-hope-d-1851-with-her-sons-henry-thomas-18081862-and-charles-18101817-46632. Anne Mee painted a miniature portrait of Louisa in watercolour on ivory, owned by the Royal Collection Trust, that was one of ‘Gallery of Beauties’ commissioned by George IV when he was Prince Regent: https://www.rct.uk/collection/420850/the-hon-louisa-hope-d-1851.
See Llewellyn-Jones, Veiled Woman 2003 (n. 58), p. 74 n. 55 (the pharos is a type of himation). Silk did not become common until the Roman period; see B. Hildebrandt, ‘Silk production and trade in the Roman Empire’, in Silk: Trade and Exchange along the Silk Roads between Rome and China in Antiquity, ed. B. Hildebrandt with C. Gillis, Oxford and Philadelphia, 2017, pp. 34–50 (34–7).
A possible source for the borders around the alternating tree-like palmettes on Louisa’s over-tunic are the borders on the himation of Hope’s ‘Bacchante Carrying torches’ (Supplementary Fig. 75a). On this Bacchante, outlined tree-like palmettes alternate with true palmettes, whose leaves all branch out from the base. Although Hope’s drawing for this engraving does not survive, he is named as its draughtman on the lower left corner of this plate; Moses is named as the engraver, and his final drawing does survive (no. 54, album at Gennadius Library). For the outlined tree-like palmettes on the torch-bearing Bacchante’s himation, an Apulian Panathenaic amphora in Passeri (Passeri, Picturae in vasculis 1767 [n. 34], Supplementary Fig. 75b) is a possible source. Although A.D. Trendall, writing in 1955 (Vasi antichi dipinti del Vaticano, Vasi italioti ed etruschi a figure rosse, 2 vols, Vatican City, 1953–1955, vol. 2, p. 207), states that this pattern was originally executed in white, which has disappeared, Hope may have nonetheless derived the motif from Passeri’s plate.
The marble krater is mentioned as now being lost in D. Grassinger, Römische Marmorkratere, Mainz am Rhein, 1991, p. 224, no. EII 2F.
Giovanni Battista Piranesi, Vasi, candelabri, cippi, sarcofagi, tripodi, lucerne, ed ornamenti antichi, Rome, 1778, vol. 1, pl. 41. Hope is known to have owned this and the twenty-two other volumes of Piranesi’s Opere; see Catalogue library of Hope 1917 (n. 4), p. 59, lot 595.
Memoirs of a Highland Lady: Elizabeth Grant of Rothiemurchus, ed. and introduction A. Tod, Edinburgh, 1988, p. 52. Tod identifies ‘Hope’s book’ as Costume of the Ancients, but does not give a date for the edition; nor does he explain why this recollection is in the section dated 1804–1806.
Brummell, ‘Fashions’ 1809 (n. 13).
Ibid.
‘Biographical Particulars of Celebrated Persons, Lately Deceased: Thomas Hope, Esq.,’ New Monthly Magazine and Literary Journal, 1831, Part III, Historical Register, 1 March 1831, pp. 136–7 (137).
M. M. Evans, Chapters on Greek Dress, London and New York, 1893, p. 1.
Acknowledgements
Many people from institutions worldwide have provided generous assistance over the years for this article. Special thanks go to Dr Maria Georgopoulou, Director of Gennadius Library of the American School of Classical Studies at Athens. She and her staff facilitated Frances Van Keuren’s study in 2006 of the drawings by Thomas Hope and Henry Moses at the Gennadius Library and provided photographs for several articles, including this one. Research support was provided to Frances Van Keuren in 2006, for the study of these drawings, by an M. G. Michael Award for Excellence in Research, Franklin College of Arts and Sciences, University of Georgia. Personnel at multiple museums assisted Frances Van Keuren in seeing and studying antiquities once in the collection of Thomas Hope. Most outstandingly, Dr Georgina Muskett, Honorary Research Associate of Classical Antiquities at the National Museums Liverpool, spent an entire day in 2015 taking the author to three locations to study and photograph antiquities from Hope’s collection. In regard to this article, the two anonymous readers and Joint Editor-in-Chief Prof. Katherine Harloe provided very helpful suggestions for how to improve it. Kristen Miller Zohn has been an admirable co-author, who generously contributed her knowledge of Neoclassical costume and her research, writing, editorial, and computer skills. Frances Van Keuren’s husband Lenny Valliere has been a rock of support during the preparation of this article; he was also one of its readers. Another reader of this article was Prof. Emeritus R. Ross Holloway†, Brown University. Sarah Van Keuren, former Adjunct Professor at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, contributed her expertise on print-making techniques. Sarah Carter, independent writer, carefully read the article and asked some valuable questions regarding its general significance. Prof. Jennie Batchelor, University of Kent, kindly shared her extensive knowledge of The Lady’s Magazine. Collector Philip Hewat-Jaboor contacted the owner of Sir Martin Arthur Shee’s portrait of Louisa Hope and obtained permission for us to publish a photograph of it. Multiple suppliers of photographs from museums and libraries in the USA and Europe went out of their way to provide digital images and the opportunity to study unpublished materials. For example, Diana Edkins from Art Resource in New York City successfully navigated the process of rapidly obtaining new photographs of Henry Moses’s unpublished Sketches in Outline of 1808 and an untitled pamphlet of 1808-9, both located at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Clara Goldman, Assistant Administrator at the Department of Drawings and Prints at The Metropolitan Museum, facilitated a visit by Frances Van Keuren to study firsthand the same etchings by Moses. In some cases, curators and librarians looked at original prints and publications when these were inaccessible because of the COVID pandemic. Laura Callery, Senior Curatorial Assistant at the Department of Rare Books & Manuscripts at the Yale Center for British Art, supplied new study photographs of their copy of Moses’s Sketches of Modern Conversation and Fashions (1804). Peter Doré, Archivist in Archives & Collections at the Library of Birmingham, consulted, transcribed, and photographed Thomas Hope’s important letter to Matthew Boulton of 14 September 1805. The rest of the people who helped are too numerous to name, but to all of them we extend our sincere gratitude.
Funding
The Univ. of Georgia Research Foundation is the single grant support that the two authors have received. However, we have received a great deal of other support from library and museum personnel over the years. This assistance is enumerated in the Acknowledgements above.
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Van Keuren, F., Zohn, K.M. ‘Some Useful Hints for Improving the Elegance and Dignity of her Attire’: Thomas Hope and Henry Moses, Greek Vases and Neoclassical Fashion. Int class trad 29, 390–429 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-022-00619-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12138-022-00619-5