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.
Figures 4 and 5 from the full article, and Figure 71, of a dress from the Millet costume collection is from the supplementary illustrations that accompany the full article and are selected as only a small representation of the full documentation and illustrations to be found in the links below:
Supp. Fig. 71, above can be seen in in the Illustrations and photos link listed below: British cotton and linen dress with embroidered grapevine on hem, ca. 1810, The
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, 13.49.17, gift of Mrs. F. D. Millet, 1913; public domain
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
Figure 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
Link to Full Article:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12138-022-00619-5
Illustrations and photos only: