Talk:Hope Collection of Pictures

Updates to Hope Collection of Pictures article

Good Day Taksen!

Regarding the updates that were made on 4 July to the Hope Collection of Pictures article, can you please address the following concerns:

• there is no reference provided to support the specific details that 372 paintings were brought to England in October 1794
  • I ask you to please add a reference to the article which underpins these two facts
• I am not well versed on what precisely happened with the estate of Thomas Hope when he died in 1831. Was the art collection immediately inherited by his son Henry Thomas Hope? Or did it first pass on to either/both of Thomas' brothers Adrian Elias Hope and Henry Philip Hope?
  • If Henry Thomas Hope in fact inherited the collection in 1831, then I would suggest that the update you made of saying after 1831 be changed to say "in 1831" (provided of course that a reference is included)
  • Alternatively, if Henry Thomas Hope did not inherit the collection until some time after the estate of his uncle Henry Philip Hope was resolved (which could not have happened prior to Henry Philip's death in 1839), then I would suggest removing after 1831 from this article as it does not provide any meaningful clarity to the reader
• the revised statement that the eighty-three painting were “sold seven years later for the sum of £121,550 by the London art dealer Asher Wertheimer” is not correct
  • what happened at the time of the sale in 1898 is a bit complicated, and the original wording of this clause was carefully chosen to simultaneously provide truthful information while also not delving into the nuance about which there are varying views; unless you are able to accurately improve the previous wording in this section of the article with supporting references, I will reinstate the original wording

Thank you very much for your interest in enhancing this article!

P.S. The statement in the Hope & Co. article that the son of Thomas Hope sold the collection is also not correct. Lord Francis Pelham Clinton-Hope was in fact the great grandson of Thomas Hope.

Observer1632 (talk) 13:20, 11 July 2022 (UTC)

Reply concerning your first item

The problem seems to be that there were at least two different kind of Hope Collections. The collection by Henry Hope had 372 paintings and was shipped to England in 1794 and not in 1795. The information that it was on 17 October and 372 paintings were shipped comes from Buist, p. 43, 49.

This document in the Amsterdam City Archive is a catalogue (in English!) of all the paintings and prints owned by Henry Hope in December 1795. 735-2895 Catalogus van schilderijen in huizen van Henry Hope in Harley Street in Londen. Met de getaxeerde en verzekerde waarden, 1795 The document has 9 pages and each page has about 30 items; 9x30=270! Someone must have checked it more carefully and found 372 paintings. 372-83= 289 paintings by Henry Hope

Reply on the postscript

This provenance of this painting by Metsu is well studied; it was owned by Hendrick Sorgh, etc. The collection of paintings by Jan and Thomas Hope was inherited by Henry Thomas Hope, the son of Thomas Hope (designer); purchased en bloc by A. Wertheimer and P. & D. Colnaghi, in 1898. Kind regards.Taksen (talk) 04:32, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

Thank you for this detailed and helpful reply Taksen!

Regarding "Hope Collections"

You are absolutely correct that there were multiple Hope Collections, and in fact more than two. For example, besides paintings, various members of the Hope family also owned vases and furniture (in particular, at Deepdene) that have also been referred to previously as being part of a 'Hope Collection'.

Knowing that the term Hope Collection had different meanings to multiple people, when I created the "Hope Collection of Pictures" article, I made sure to very specifically define what I was referring to in this particular article. That is, this article was defined in the opening paragraph as being about the 83 paintings that were sold collectively in 1898, which are documented in the catalogue whose image is captured in the infobox. If you open the catalogue file, the cover (page 1) has the name 'The Hope Collection of Pictures' (I had to cut the 'The' out from the article title because of Wikipedia policy) and the 'The Hope Collection of Pictures of the Dutch and Flemish Schools' name appears later on page 9.

Recognizing also that there had been a larger collection of paintings (i.e., the 372), I acknowledged its existence in the subsequent History section, thereby hopefully helping to make readers aware of the fact that they might see 'Hope Collection' used in another context. Perhaps someday someone else will be up to the challenge of writing a new article about that collection.

Provenance of Man Writing a Letter

What I have frequently found when it comes to provenance information is that all the members of different generations of a family who owned a painting are not always listed. For example, for this Metsu painting, the specific information found on the National Gallery of Ireland website includes "Jan Hope; Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope, Deepdene, thence by descent". This should not be interpreted though as Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope inherited the painting from Jan Hope, especially since there is no way that this was possible given that Jan Hope died in 1784 and Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope was born in 1866. Here is a more detailed timeline:

• the collection that was assembled by Jan and his cousin Henry Hope would pass on to Thomas Hope
• Thomas Hope died in 1831, and to the best of my knowledge the collection next went to one of his brothers. I primarily base this on having seen catalogue raisonné records that document some of the paintings being in the possession of Henry Philip Hope in the 1830's
• regardless of who first inherited the collection from Thomas Hope, we know that they eventually made their way to Thomas' son Henry Thomas Hope
• however Henry Thomas Hope died in 1862, and therefore it is not possible for him to have sold the paintings in 1898
• in fact the paintings were initially inherited by Henry Thomas Hope's widow, Anne Adèle Bichet; she and Henry Thomas Hope had only one child, a daughter named Henrietta Adela Hope
• Henrietta married Henry Pelham-Clinton, and their second son was initially Francis Pelham-Clinton
• Francis Pelham-Clinton's maternal grandmother (i.e., Anne Adèle Bichet, the widow of Henry Thomas Hope) did not want her gambling son-in-law (i.e., Henry Pelham-Clinton) to inherit the wealth of her former husband, and so she arranged for the paintings to pass on from her to her grandson on the condition that he add Hope to his surname, and that is how Francis Pelham-Clinton became the Lord Francis Pelham Clinton Hope who is mentioned in the provenance details on the National Gallery of Ireland website

I cannot speak to who sold the remaining paintings of the 372 or when this occurred, but for the 83 paintings that are the subject of the Hope Collection of Pictures article, these paintings were definitely sold by Thomas Hope's great grandson.

Thank you once again for your efforts with this article!

Observer1632 (talk) 11:45, 12 July 2022 (UTC)

I have looked into the Hope paintings some more and have learned that a portion of the above stated timeline is not correct:

• Most critically, the initial statement was a false assumption, as not all of the paintings of Jan and Henry Hope were passed on to Thomas Hope. Many, if not all, of the ones that were in the possession of Henry Hope at the time of his death were put up for sale by his niece's husband John Williams Hope through Christie’s in three separate auctions that were held in April 1811, June 1816 and July 1816.
• Regarding the remaining Hope paintings, not all of these were owned by Thomas either, as I have found records which show that the Jan’s youngest son Henry Philip owned paintings well before Thomas passed away in 1831.
• Regarding Henry Thomas Hope’s widow, I am now unclear about what her surname was, as while some sources list it as being Bichet, there are also many which have it as Bichat.

I have updated the History section of the Hope Collection of Pictures article to reflect some of this newly found information.

Observer1632 (talk) 21:30, 25 July 2022 (UTC)

References

Taksen (talk) 13:49, 21 September 2022 (UTC)