Thomas Hope (designer)
He is best known as an early promoter of Greek Revival architecture, opening his house as a museum and his novel Anastasius, a work which many experts considered a rival to the writings of Lord Byron.
Born in Amsterdam, he fled to London after the French Revolution spread to the Netherlands, leaving a large part of his art collection behind.
[4] In 1784, when Thomas was fifteen, his father died unexpectedly in the Hague right after purchasing Bosbeek, the mansion that would later house his large art collection.
Not long after his mother died in early January 1790, Thomas received the rights and liabilities of a person of full age and was admitted to the board of the Hope company.
Experienced from his extensive travel, Thomas Hope enjoyed the cosmopolitan atmosphere of London, while his younger brothers missed their home in the Netherlands.
He stayed for about a year in Constantinople and produced some 350 drawings depicting the people and places he witnessed, a collection now to be found in the Benaki Museum, Athens.
In 1803, he ordered Jason with the Golden Fleece, a sculpture by Thorvaldsen in Copenhagen City Hall, included in the semi-official Danish Culture Canon.
Here, surrounded by his large collections of paintings, sculptures and antiques, Deepdene became a famous resort of men of letters as well as of people of fashion.
"[16] When the French painter Antoine Dubost exhibited a portrait of him titled "Beauty and the Beast", portraying him as a monster offering his wife jewels, it caused a public scandal: the painting was mutilated by Louisa's brother.
A Historical Essay on Architecture, which featured illustrations based on early Hope drawings, was published posthumously by his family in 1835.
Ironically, given Hope's mild reputation, the authorship of the dashing Anastasius was at first mistakenly attributed to Lord Byron, who, according to legend, confided to Marguerite, Countess of Blessington, that he wept bitterly on reading it.
These events prompted Hope to reveal his identity as author in later editions, adding a map of Anastasius's travels and fine-tuning the text, although his authorship was initially greeted with incredulity by some journals.
His family thereafter embraced conservative values, causing them to authorise the demolition of the writer's legendary London home, disperse his fabled art collection, and distance themselves from his Oriental masterpiece.
No substantial collection of Hope's personal papers survived the family indifference and Anastasius, his magnum opus, became a victim of the sanctimonious morality of the Victorian age.
In addition to his other accomplishments, Hope was the author of an important philosophical work published posthumously, The Origin and Prospect of Man (1831), in which his speculations diverged widely from the social and religious views of the Victorian age.
[1] This volume, which has been cited by the philosopher Roger Scruton, was a highly eclectic work and took a global view of the challenges facing humanity.
With a degree of pleasantry and acumen peculiar to northern criticism, he asks, 'Where has Mr. Hope hidden all his eloquence and poetry up to this hour?
How is it that he has, all of a sudden, burst out into descriptions which would not disgrace the pen of Tacitus, and displayed a depth of feeling and vigor of imagination which Lord Byron could not excel?
The Mausolea and Monuments Trust has been working with Mole Valley District Council to rescue the structure and is running a campaign to excavate and repair it.
