Thomas Hope 1769-1831 and The Neo-classical Idea by David Watkin soon to be presented for sale on the terrific BookLovers of Bath web site!
Published: London: John Murray, 1968, Hardback in dust wrapper.
Contains: Black & white photographs; Black & white drawings; Appendices [5]; Plans;
From the cover: Thomas Hope, 1769-1831, eccentric offspring of a Dutch banking family, employed his wealth and taste to impress on Regency society the principles of Neo-Classicism. While he invested in Old Masters, antique statuary and vases, he also patronised such contemporary artists as Flaxman, Thorvaldsen, Haydon and Benjamin West; and he anticipated William Morris by training craftsmen to make durable furniture from his own Greek and Egyptian designs. His London mansion was something between a djinns fabrication and a museum filled at night with fashionable routs, by day with ticket-holding members of the public. His country place in Surrey was a model of all that an enlightened gentlemans estate should be.
Although Hope prescribed classical austerity for others, he himself simultaneously flirted with oriental splendour and the Picturesque. He wrote a romantic novel called Anastasius, had himself and his wife painted in Turkish costumes, and backed his Greek vases with seraglio draperies. In this he expressed the yearning of his age to have every beauty, every strangeness, all at once; and being a man of character as well as feeling, he carried off his grand ideas superbly.
In Thomas Hope Dr Watkin has found a subject hitherto unknown except to cognoscenti, and, with much new material, has created round him a work rich in social and aesthetic history, full of delights for the discerning reader of today. His book, with its wealth of illustrations, many of which are published for the first time, is a highly instructive and entertaining picture of a past age. It also has significance now, bewildered as we are in much the same way by the present clamour of conflicting values.
Very Good in Good+ Dust Wrapper. A little rubbing to the edges of the dust wrapper with a very small nick to the top edge of the upper panel and a marginally larger one to the foot of the lower. Price Clipped. Edges of the text block lightly spotted with a stain to the edges of the last few edges. Text complete, clean and tight.
Green boards with Gilt titling to the Spine. [XXI] 316 pages. Index. Bibliography. 8¾” x 5¾”.
Of course, if you don’t like this one, may I entice you with something lovely from my Architecture catalogue?
BookLovers of Bath 