Lot n° 547
Estimation :
60000 - 80000
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THOMAS HOPE (AMSTERDAM, 1769 - LONDON, 1831) - Lot 547
THOMAS HOPE (AMSTERDAM, 1769 - LONDON, 1831)
Exceptional pedestal table with winged sphinxes, chased bronze, antique green patina and gilt, marble top and spacer plate.
It rests on a triangular base with concave sides decorated with water-leaf and pearl friezes, on which rest three hind legs surmounted by a winged sphinx bust.
H.: 75 cm - D.: 66 cm
Early 19th century England, circa 1805/10
This remarkable tripod Athenian pedestal table is based on the design published in London in 1807 by
Thomas Hope:
Household Furniture and Interior Decoration
Executed from Designs by Thomas Hope. It forms figure 3 of the plate n°22: Tripod table.
It was probably in his collections at
Deepdene House in Surrey.
To this day, Thomas Hope's name remains associated with the uniquely English Greek Revival movement. This term does not refer simply to a return to more or less undifferentiated ancient forms, as had been the case for over half a century, but to a veritable doctrine that can be traced back to 1804, when Tomas Hope published a virulent charge against James Wyatt's project for Downing College.
James Wyatt's project for Downing College, Cambridge. Hope then became a fierce defender of the Greek orders in all their purity, undertaking numerous journeys during which he was able to observe and draw the ancient remains that enabled him to elaborate his doctrine based on the pre-eminence of Greek art, a doctrine already announced by Winckelmann, but which he brought to strict observance.
Born in Amsterdam on August 30, 1769, Thomas Hope was a member of a wealthy family of Scottish bankers based in Amsterdam, the Hope family, who founded and managed the Hope & Co. bank. Son of Jan
Hope (1737-1784), an important patron of the arts, he chose not to follow the family tradition of integrating the financial trade into the Hope group. Instead, with a passion for the arts, in 1787 he embarked on a grand tour of Europe that took him to Italy, Sicily, Spain, Portugal, Syria, the Balkans, Hungary, France, Germany and England.
Germany and England. He returned to Amsterdam five times.
The following year, fleeing French troops, his family moved permanently to London, where they settled under the management of Henry Hope
Hope (1735-1811), Thomas's cousin. Between 1796 and 1798, Thomas Hope
Hope visited the Ottoman Empire, staying in Constantinople and Ephesus, then Greece, before traveling to Egypt from September to October 1797, visiting the pyramids in the company of Frederick Hornemann. Returning to London in 1789, the following year he acquired Clerk House, built around 1771-1775 by
Robert Adam on Duchess Street, from Elizabeth Greville (1720- 1800), Countess of Warwick and sister of Sir William Hamilton. After the Earl of Warwick's death in 1773, she married General Robert Clerk (1720-1797) for the second time.
From 1799 to 1802, Thomas Hope undertook a major renovation and remodeling of the building to accommodate his immense collection. He called on architect Charles Heathcote Tatham, who closed the courtyard with a new wing to house the
Picture Gallery (see reproduction above).
A member of the Royal Institution in 1799 and of the Society of Dilettanti in 1800, Hope travelled again with the French artist Michel-François Préault, notably to Athens.
François Préault, notably to Athens and the Peloponnese, then to Paris in 1802, taking advantage of the signing of the Treaty of Amiens.
Naples the same year, and Rome again in 1803. It was during this last period that he acquired a large part of Sir William Hamilton's famous collection of vases. Elected to the Royal Society
Society and the Royal Society of Arts in 1804, and a Fellow of the British
Institution in 1805, he married Louisa Beresford on April 16, 1806 - who in 1830 became lady-in-waiting to Queen Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the
Saxe-Meiningen, wife of William IV of England - and the following year published his reference work Household Furniture and
Interior Furniture and Interior Decoration Executed from Designs by
Thomas Hope, illustrated with engraved drawings by architect Edmund
Aikin and painter Geroge Dawe, and showcasing his new conception of Greek orders, in a style close to his French architectural tendencies developed in the years
In the same year, on May 26 1807, he acquired
Deepdene House, a sumptuous country residence in Surrey, from Charles Merrik Burrell (1774)1862), which he enlarged considerably between 1813 and 1814.
Present in Paris after the fall of Napoleon in 1814, and again in 1815, he returned to Italy in 1816, after crossing Switzerland. He stopped off in Florence and Pisa, before returning to Rome, where he visited Bertel Thorvaldsen's studio, in
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