Stitching is Blooming
Needlepoint by Marie Sibille Merian
Mary Granville Delany bloomed in her 70s, when she embarked on her life’s work — creating 985 life-size botanical masterpieces inventing a form of paper-cutting or decoupage, which she called her “paper mosaiks” now held by the British Museum.
Stitching is Blooming
Whether Up Close Flowers as above, a bouquet or field of flowers, who doesn’t love flowers!
Today, we introduce two female artists who were pioneers and began their life work late in their life who bring out the extraordinary beauty of flora from near and far.
Some of each of their expansive oeuvre graces this page
Maria Sibylla Merian, age 52, in 1699, more than a century before Charles Darwin explored the Galapagos, she set sail for a projected 5 year expedition to Suriname, the northern coast of South America.
The voyage afforded Merian a unique opportunity to explore new species of insects and plants. She changed how the human world understood the insect world. Her floral paintings were exact and most often included insects such as the one here.
Her exacting art also changed the world view of flora and fauna
150 years after Merian’s death, scientist Ernst Haeckel coined the term “ecology” for the study of relationships among organisms and their environment throughout their life cycles.
Today, Maria Sibylla Merian would be most proud that many scholars consider her the world’s first ecologist.