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Mary Delany Flowers
Monday, January 09, 2012
"Imagine starting your life's work at seventy-two".
This is the first sentence in the Paper Garden by Molly Peacock - a
marvelously written book about the artist Mary Delaney. When you finish
the book you may feel that a best friend has recently left.
Mary
Delaney composed "an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking
cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as
the Flora Delanica". She began what was then a new art form - the art of paper collage - at the age of seventy-two.
A
number of her paper-cut flower mosaics (remember these were all
handmade tissue thin papers in the 1700's) mix painting and cutting of
dried plant parts with papers to create completely satisfying works of
art.
"Thin
as a billowing white cotton nightgown, Mrs. Delany's Grand Magnolia
lies back in the balmy darkness of the summer night of its background.
Perhaps her most blowsy bloom, plumped with the musk of maturity, it
evokes the 18th century's gardener's word for a fully opened Magnolia
grandiflora "blown" (magnolia's were imported to England in the 1700's
and commanded a price per plant equivalent to many person's year
salary).
Like Redoute's Roses, Mary Delany's
flowers are a treat for needlepoint. Careful study, concentration,
availability of different hues and tones, shall I use a thread that I
separate in some areas or all, how to shade (layer) the colors?
Mary Delany Flowers
"Imagine starting your life's work at seventy-two".
This is the first sentence in the Paper Garden by Molly Peacock - a marvelously written book about the artist Mary Delaney. When you finish the book you may feel that a best friend has recently left.
Mary Delaney composed "an astonishing 985 botanically correct, breathtaking cut-paper flowers, now housed in the British Museum and referred to as the Flora Delanica". She began what was then a new art form - the art of paper collage - at the age of seventy-two.
A number of her paper-cut flower mosaics (remember these were all handmade tissue thin papers in the 1700's) mix painting and cutting of dried plant parts with papers to create completely satisfying works of art.
"Thin as a billowing white cotton nightgown, Mrs. Delany's Grand Magnolia lies back in the balmy darkness of the summer night of its background. Perhaps her most blowsy bloom, plumped with the musk of maturity, it evokes the 18th century's gardener's word for a fully opened Magnolia grandiflora "blown" (magnolia's were imported to England in the 1700's and commanded a price per plant equivalent to many person's year salary).
Like Redoute's Roses, Mary Delany's flowers are a treat for needlepoint. Careful study, concentration, availability of different hues and tones, shall I use a thread that I separate in some areas or all, how to shade (layer) the colors?
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Comments
floating on air in the dark, candle-lit rooms of the eighteenth century. I talk about the dress and many other Delany works in my book, Sister Arts, which you can find here: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0816670145/1n9867a-20.