Art: Mary Delany (1700-1788)
Flowering Raspberry (Rubus odoratus) paper collage.
I’m not sure how I learned about the extraordinary botanical collages of Mary Delany, but as soon as I saw photos of her work, I headed straight to Wikipedia.
There I got enraged for the umpteenth time about the helplessness of women in past centuries (Delany was forced to marry a 60-year-old when she was 17). Finally, I came to this description of her late-blooming avocation.
“In 1771, a widow in her early 70s, Mary began on decoupage, a fashion with ladies of the court. Her works were detailed and botanically accurate depictions of plants.
“She used tissue paper and hand colouration to produce these pieces. She created 985 of these works, calling them her ‘Paper Mosaiks,’ [from] the age of 71 to 88, when her eyesight failed her.
‘With the plant specimen set before her she cut minute particles of coloured paper to represent the petals, stamens, calyx, leaves, veins, stalk and other parts of the plant, and, using lighter and darker paper to form the shading, she stuck them on a black background. By placing one piece of paper upon another she sometimes built up several layers and in a complete picture there might be hundreds of pieces to form one plant. It is thought she first dissected each plant so that she might examine it carefully for accurate portrayal.’ [Hayden, Ruth. Mrs Delany: her life and her flowers] …
“Frances Burney (Madame D’Arblay) was introduced to her in 1783, and frequently visited her at her London home. … She had known many of the luminaries of her day, had corresponded with Jonathan Swift [among others], and left a detailed picture of polite English society of the 18th century in her six volumes of Autobiography and Letters (ed. Lady Llanover, 1861–1862).”
More pictures at Wikipedia, here. You may also be interested in this post, about the botanical art of Peter Rabbit creator Beatrix Potter. Potter, as a woman, failed to receive the attention men in science achieved — a century after Delany.
Nothing like marrying a grandfather! Her pictures are absolutely gorgeous! I’m in awe….
She eventually made an interesting life for herself — even royalty knew about her flowers and asked her to make some.
She did that!
It’s heartening to know that, in spite of all the limitations forced on her, she found a way to create such beauty. But imagine what she could’ve done, if she’d only had more freedom . . .
I try to tell myself that women in those times didn’t know what they were missing, that they were often accepting of the way things were and happy that they could do as much as they managed to do. But “myself” is not convinced.
Very pretty !
If you do an internet search, you can see lots more.
Thank you for sharing.
I am reminded of the glass flowers at Harvard U. People do amazing things when inspired by nature.