The Right Honorable Charles Hope

Charles Hope was one of the great voices of Edinburgh's courts. Henry Cockburn, a younger lawyer who wrote a famous memoir of the city, compared the sound of it to that of Sarah Siddons, the most admired tragic actress of the age. Hope rose fast. He was Lord Advocate, Scotland's chief law officer, in 1801, Lord Justice Clerk in 1804, and from 1811 to 1841 Lord President of the Court of Session, the country's highest civil judge. During the war with France he also served as lieutenant-colonel of the Royal Edinburgh Volunteers. Privy Counsellors are styled the Right Honourable, and Hope joined the Council in 1822, a year before Raeburn died. The museum gives the portrait no date. Raeburn painted Hope more than once, and a larger portrait from around 1804 belongs to the National Galleries of Scotland. This half-length stayed with the Hope family, came to Boston through a dealer, and was bequeathed to the museum in 1917 by Mrs Robert Dawson Evans.