Thomas Hope was a Dutch-British interior and Regency designer, traveler, author, philosopher, art collector, and partner in the banking firm Hope & Co. 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.
Thomas Hope in oriental dress; color print after the portrait of 1798 by William Beechey
Hope Venus (Syracuse Aphrodite) in National Archaeological Museum, Athens
Mr. Hope of Amsterdam playing cricket; by Jean-François Sablet in Rome (1792).
Villa Welgelegen
Hope & Co. was a Dutch bank that existed for two and a half centuries. The bank was located in Amsterdam until 1795; originally it concentrated on Great Britain. From 1750 it played a major part in the finances of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) through Thomas Hope and his brother Adrian. During the Seven Years' War (1756–1763) the Hope brothers profited from the Netherlands' neutral position and became very wealthy. The Hopes became heavily involved in the Dutch Caribbean, and Danish West Indies. They specialised in plantation loans, in which the entire produce of the plantation was remitted to the lender, who would supervise its sale in order to secure repayment. In this way, the Hopes helped the plantation economy to become integrated into a global network of financiers and consumers. The Hope family were among the richest in Europe at the time. The family business focused on financing commercial transactions and especially on issuing money loans to monarchs and governments in Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Russia, Portugal, Spain, France and America. The bank was famous for having Catherine the Great as their client and Adrian supplied her several times with diamonds.
Offices of Hope & Co. for more than a century: Keizersgracht 444–446 Amsterdam (the white building in the middle). The brown building on the left is 448, once the private residence of Henry Hope.
Portrait of Adrian Hope by Cosmo Alexander (1763)
Henry Hope in 1788, mezzotint by Charles Howard Hodges after a now-lost painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds.
John Williams Hope (1757–1813), (Richard Cosway, 1796).