‘Some Useful Hints for Improving the Elegance and Dignity of her Attire’: Thomas Hope and Henry Moses, Greek Vases and Neoclassical Fashion

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.

Introduction

Thomas Hope,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.² Beginning at the age of eighteen, Hope travelled extensively in the Mediterranean between 1787 and 1795.³ Five volumes of Hope’s drawings from his travels survive at the Benaki Museum in Athens.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.⁵ Hope was a self-trained draughtsman, who attested that he drew from early childhood.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’.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).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).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.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’.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’.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.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.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,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.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.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),¹⁸ is only known through two copies, and appears not to have been discussed in previous scholarship.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 lines²⁰; 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).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.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.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).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.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.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.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).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),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 1807.³⁰ One is a ‘Tripod table, supported by chimaeras’ (Supplementary Fig. 7a) and the other is a ‘Settee’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.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.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’.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.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.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).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.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).

Fig. 1

Attic red-figure neck amphora once in Hope Collection; now Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design 23.323, Gift of Mrs. Gustav Radeke; courtesy of the RISD Museum, Providence, Rhode Island

Fig. 2

Thomas Hope, preliminary drawing 49 from album ‘[O]UTLINES FOR MY COSTUME’ (see also Supplementary Fig. 10; for Moses’s final drawing of same figure, see Fig. 3), American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library

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)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).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).⁴¹

Fig. 3

Henry Moses, ‘Minerva from a Statue at Florence’ (label in Moses’s handwriting), final drawing 29 from album ‘COSTUMES OF THE ANCIENTS. HOPE’, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library

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.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.⁴³

In Hope’s preliminary drawing no. 58 (Fig. 4), entitled ‘Hero with his petasus on a Greek vase’,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),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,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).⁴⁷ Note that the ornament is absent on the original vase as well as in Tischbein’s engraving of it.

Fig. 4

Thomas Hope, ‘Hero travelling with his petasus on a Greek vase’, preliminary drawing 58 with watermark of 1804 on left edge, from album ‘[O]UTLINES FOR MY COSTUME’, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library

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. 4.⁴⁸ 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.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).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’,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.

Fig. 5

© The Metropolitan Museum of Art, from Art Resource, New York

Etching signed by Henry Moses as draughtsman and engraver, ‘A Man, Two Women, a Child, and a Dog by a Fireplace’ [modern title], from Henry Moses, Sketches in Outline Drawn and Engraved by Henry Moses, London, February 1808, plate dated February 1808; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Elisha Whittelsey Collection 2014.757.4(9), image

Fig. 6

Etching signed by Henry Moses as draughtsman and engraver (see Supplementary Fig. 19 for detail), from Henry Moses, A series of twenty-nine designs of modern costume, drawn and engraved by Henry Moses, London, 1823, pl. 8 [= Henry Moses, Designs of Modern Costume Engraved for Thomas Hope of Deepdene, London, 1812, pl. 19]; copy in possession of author

Fig. 7

Detail of child from left side of etching signed by Henry Moses as draughtsman and engraver (see Supplementary Fig. 20a for whole view), from Henry Moses, Twenty-nine Designs of Modern Costume 1823, pl. 12 [= Moses, Modern Costume, 1812, pl. 6]; copy in possession of author

Fig. 8

Etching signed by Henry Moses as draughtsman and engraver (see Supplementary Fig. 21 for detail), ‘LE BEAU MONDE’, from Henry Moses, Designs of Modern Costume, &c, on 29 plates, London, [1823?], pl. 1 [= Moses, Modern Costume 1812, pl. 1]; copy in possession of author

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.⁵² A fashion plate for Lady’s Magazine of July 1808 (Supplementary Fig. 24a–b)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 1809.⁵⁴ There are compositional similarities between several of the fashion plates of these years and Moses’s fashion publications.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.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 overfold⁵⁷ and a veil, or epiblema (ἐπίβλημα in Greek);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.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.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.

Fig. 9

a–b Infrared photos of torso of Priestess (a) and skirt of Priestess (b), from Thomas Hope, preliminary drawing 51 from album ‘[O]UTLINES FOR MY COSTUME’ (see also Supplementary Fig. 26a), American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library; photos by Vassilis Paschalis, Head of Conservation Department, Benaki Museum, Athens

Fig. 10

Henry Moses’s, ‘Priestess from a Statue in the Giustiniani gallery’ (label in Moses’s handwriting), final drawing 16 from album ‘COSTUMES OF THE ANCIENTS. HOPE’, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library

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).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),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).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’.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.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;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).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).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).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).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.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).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’.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.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.

Fig. 11

‘London Fashionable Full Dress’, unsigned fashion plate from The Lady's Magazine; or, Entertaining Companion for the Fair Sex, Appropriated Solely to Their Use and Amusement, London, 39, May 1808, Casey Fashion Plates, Los Angeles Public Library; ‘free of known restrictions under copyright law’

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).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.⁷⁶

Fig. 12

a–b Infrared photos of head (a) and legs (b) of Bacchante, from Thomas Hope, preliminary drawing 54 from album ‘[O]UTLINES FOR MY COSTUME’ (see also Supplementary Fig. 52a), American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library; photos by Vassilis Paschalis, Head of Conservation Department, Benaki Museum, Athens

Fig. 13

Henry Moses, ‘Bacchante with the thyrsus’ (label in Moses’s handwriting), final drawing 50 from album ‘COSTUMES OF THE ANCIENTS. HOPE’, American School of Classical Studies at Athens, Gennadius Library

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,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).⁷⁸ The Bacchante’s belted over-tunic, called an ependytes (ἐπενδύτης in Greek),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).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).⁸¹ It is interesting to note that in both engravings, Hope has lengthened and thickened the curls to be more Neoclassical in style.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).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]…’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).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,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).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).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).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.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.⁹¹

The final decorative patterns in the Bacchante’s drapery appear on her stole, which takes the form of a loose himation.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).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).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).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.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’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).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’.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,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’.¹⁰¹ Aileen Ribeiro has noted that Louisa’s dress ‘was possibly inspired by the thigh-length tunic and long stole’ of Hope’s Bacchante.¹⁰² At the same time, like other portraits of Louisa,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.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.¹⁰⁵

Fig. 14

Sir Martin Arthur Shee, Mrs. T. Hope [Louisa Hope], oil on canvas, 1807 (for detail views, see Supplementary Figs 74a–b, 76a and 77a); by permission of The Hon. Mrs. Everard de Lisle

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).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).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.

Fig. 15

‘London Fashionable Dresses’, unsigned fashion plate from Lady’s Magazine, 39, June 1808; Fashion Plate Collection, 19th Century, Ella Strong Denison Library, Scripps College, Claremont, California

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’.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.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’.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.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’.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.