Mary Delany
Encyclopedia
Mary Delany (14 May 1700 – 15 April 1788) was an English
Bluestocking
, artist, and letter-writer; equally famous for her "paper-mosaicks" and her lively correspondence.
, Wiltshire
, a niece of George Granville, Baron Lansdowne. Her parents were Colonel Bernard Granville and Mary Granville, nee Westcombe, both loyal Tory
supporters of the Stuart Crown. Mary had one brother, Bernard, and a sister, Anne. When Mary was young, her parents moved the family to London, and Mary attended a school taught by a French refugee, Mademoiselle Puelle. Mary came into close contact with the Court when she was sent to live with her aunt, Lady Stanley, who was childless the intention being that she would eventually become a Maid of Honour.
While living with Lady Stanley, Mary became learned in, "English, French, history, music, needlework and dancing..." Mary came in contact with Handel
while at the household, listening to music he had composed; this contact with Handel would stay with Mary for the rest of her life. Mary's plans to become a lady in waiting were ruined with Queen Anne's death in 1714, which led to a change in power, and a Hanoverian on the throne, supported by the Whig
s. The Granvilles moved to a manor at Buckland in Gloucestershire, where they were quite isolated from English society. However, Mary was able to continue her education and her pursuit of paper cutting, which had developed at an early age.
Near the end of 1717 Mary was invited to stay with her uncle, Lord Lansdowne, in Wiltshire. She was introduced to Alexander Pendarves
during this stay, and it soon became clear that her family had an interest in a marriage between the two. Pendarves was Member of Parliament for Launceston and 60 years old, whereas Mary was just 17. In February 1718 she was unhappily married to him, a marriage brought on by her parents' financial dependence on Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Lansdowne's hope to have political influence through the nuptials.
Despite her lack of resources, widowhood provided new opportunities for Mrs Pendarves. Widows, unlike unmarried women, were able to move freely in society, and for the first time in her life, Mrs Pendarves was able to pursue her own interests without the oversight of any man. Perhaps because of her own unhappy marriage, she was not satisfied with the options available to women in the 18th century. She wrote, "Why must women be driven to the necessity of marrying? a state that should always be a matter of choice! and if a young woman has not fortune sufficient to maintain her in the situation she has been bred to, what can she do, but marry?" Mrs Pendarves was a very perceptive woman, "She judged everything and everybody for herself; and, while ridiculing all empty-headed or vain insipidity, whether fashionable or eccentric, was always ready to applaud the unusual, if sincere and worthy. She was eager in the acquisition of knowledge of all kinds to the end of her life..."
Because she had no home of her own, after her first husband's death, Mrs Pendarves spent time living with various relatives and friends. To begin with, she lived with her aunt and uncle Stanley, and after her aunt's death, she spent time in Ireland with the family of her friend Mrs Donellan. In Ireland, Mrs Pendarves made the acquaintance of Dr Patrick Delany, an Irish clergyman who was already married to a rich widow. It was not until 1743 that on a trip to London Dr Delany proposed to Mrs Pendarves, much to the dismay of her family. She chose to take Dr Delany as her husband, and the two were married in June of 1743.
The Delanys passed a year in London before moving to Dublin, where Dr Delany had a home. Both husband and wife were very interested in botany and gardening: "Their mutual pleasure in their garden at Delville near Dublin in particular, his encouragement of her gardening, painting, shell-work and needlework resulted in a surge of activity in a variety of media in all of which the basic theme was the flower, whether in stocking the Delville garden, painting garden landscapes, decorating interiors with shells, or working embroideries." After twenty-five years of marriage, most of it spent in Ireland, Dr Delany died in Bath, England, on May 6, 1768 at the age of eighty-four, and Mrs Delany found herself, once again, a widow.
, a close friend. The two shared a kinship in botany, often going out to look for specific specimens. It was during her stay with the Duchess that Mary became acquainted with two well-known botanists of the time Joseph Banks
and Daniel Solander
. This contact with the botanists only encouraged Mary's interest in botany and also encouraged the knowledge on which many of her flower paper-cuttings are based.
In 1771, Mary began to create cut out paper artworks (decoupage
) as was the fashion for ladies of the court. Her works were exceptionally detailed and botanically accurate depictions of plants. She used tissue paper
and hand colouration to produce these pieces. She created 1,700 of these works, calling them her "Paper Mosaiks [sic]", from the age of 71 to 88 when her eyesight failed her. During this time, Mary made nearly 1,000 of the paper flowers.
"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..." Mary took great care to make sure that each of her flowers were correct, in number of stamens and petals. She also became so well-known that many donors began to send her flowers to cut. They can still be seen in the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum
today. Upon her death, "The ten volumes of Mrs. Delany's Flora were inherited by Lady Llanover, the daughter of Georgina Mary Ann Port. Lady Llanover, who died in 1896 at the age of ninety-four, bequeathed these volumes to the British Museum..."
When the Dowager Duchess died, George and Charlotte gave her a small house at Windsor
and a pension of 300 pounds a year. Mary had become familiar with the Queen Charlotte during her time paper-cutting, and while living in the house at Windsor, became an important part within the King and Queen's lives. The King and Queen were great supporters of Mary's paper-cutting, "The King and Queen...always desired that any curious or beautiful plants should be transmitted to Mrs. Delany when in blossom."
Frances Burney (Madame D'Arblay) was introduced to her in 1783, and frequently visited her at her London home and at Windsor, and owed to her friendship her court appointment. Delany, in her eighties at this time, had a reputation for cutting out and making the intricate paper mosaics (collage
s) now in the British Museum
. She had known many of the luminaries of her day, had corresponded with Jonathan Swift
, Sir Joseph Banks, and Young, 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). Burke
calls her "a real fine lady, the model of an accomplished woman of former times".
In the year 1980, a descendant of Mary Delany's sister Anne, Ruth Hayden, published a book on Delany's work: Mrs. Delany and Her Flower Collages, which was reissued in 2000 as Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers (British Museum Press).
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
Bluestocking
Blue Stockings Society (England)
The Blue Stockings Society was an informal women's social and educational movement in England in the mid-18th century. The society emphasized education and mutual co-operation rather than the individualism which marked the French version....
, artist, and letter-writer; equally famous for her "paper-mosaicks" and her lively correspondence.
Early life
Mary Delany was born at CoulstonCoulston
Coulston is a village and civil parish in Wiltshire, England, five miles North East of the town of Westbury, just north of the B3098 road....
, Wiltshire
Wiltshire
Wiltshire is a ceremonial county in South West England. It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset, Somerset, Hampshire, Gloucestershire, Oxfordshire and Berkshire. It contains the unitary authority of Swindon and covers...
, a niece of George Granville, Baron Lansdowne. Her parents were Colonel Bernard Granville and Mary Granville, nee Westcombe, both loyal Tory
Tory
Toryism is a traditionalist and conservative political philosophy which grew out of the Cavalier faction in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms. It is a prominent ideology in the politics of the United Kingdom, but also features in parts of The Commonwealth, particularly in Canada...
supporters of the Stuart Crown. Mary had one brother, Bernard, and a sister, Anne. When Mary was young, her parents moved the family to London, and Mary attended a school taught by a French refugee, Mademoiselle Puelle. Mary came into close contact with the Court when she was sent to live with her aunt, Lady Stanley, who was childless the intention being that she would eventually become a Maid of Honour.
While living with Lady Stanley, Mary became learned in, "English, French, history, music, needlework and dancing..." Mary came in contact with Handel
HANDEL
HANDEL was the code-name for the UK's National Attack Warning System in the Cold War. It consisted of a small console consisting of two microphones, lights and gauges. The reason behind this was to provide a back-up if anything failed....
while at the household, listening to music he had composed; this contact with Handel would stay with Mary for the rest of her life. Mary's plans to become a lady in waiting were ruined with Queen Anne's death in 1714, which led to a change in power, and a Hanoverian on the throne, supported by the Whig
Whig
-In the British Isles:* A faction of the Scottish Covenanters during the 17th-century Wars of the Three Kingdoms, and the original Whigs....
s. The Granvilles moved to a manor at Buckland in Gloucestershire, where they were quite isolated from English society. However, Mary was able to continue her education and her pursuit of paper cutting, which had developed at an early age.
Near the end of 1717 Mary was invited to stay with her uncle, Lord Lansdowne, in Wiltshire. She was introduced to Alexander Pendarves
Alexander Pendarves
Alexander Pendarves, MP was an English politician of the Tory party, and a wealthy landowner.-Early life:...
during this stay, and it soon became clear that her family had an interest in a marriage between the two. Pendarves was Member of Parliament for Launceston and 60 years old, whereas Mary was just 17. In February 1718 she was unhappily married to him, a marriage brought on by her parents' financial dependence on Lord Lansdowne, and Lord Lansdowne's hope to have political influence through the nuptials.
Married life
The Pendarveses left for Roscrow Castle in April; once settled, Mrs Pendarves was able to enjoy the great views that Roscrow offered, and was able to get in quite a bit of riding. Mr Pendarves's gout grew worse as the year progressed, and in the second year of their marriage, Mrs Pendarves was forced to nurse her ailing husband. In 1721, the two took a house in London and there, though Mr Pendarves began to drink excessively, Mrs Pendarves was able to be reunited with many of her old friends. In 1724, Mr Pendarves died suddenly in his sleep, leaving his young wife a widow. Mr Pendarves had not altered his will after his marriage, and so Mrs Pendarves did not inherit what remained of his estate. "Mr. Pendarves, concerned with the bottle that allowed him to forget the loss of part of his fortune, had had no time to consider settling the rest of it on his wife."Despite her lack of resources, widowhood provided new opportunities for Mrs Pendarves. Widows, unlike unmarried women, were able to move freely in society, and for the first time in her life, Mrs Pendarves was able to pursue her own interests without the oversight of any man. Perhaps because of her own unhappy marriage, she was not satisfied with the options available to women in the 18th century. She wrote, "Why must women be driven to the necessity of marrying? a state that should always be a matter of choice! and if a young woman has not fortune sufficient to maintain her in the situation she has been bred to, what can she do, but marry?" Mrs Pendarves was a very perceptive woman, "She judged everything and everybody for herself; and, while ridiculing all empty-headed or vain insipidity, whether fashionable or eccentric, was always ready to applaud the unusual, if sincere and worthy. She was eager in the acquisition of knowledge of all kinds to the end of her life..."
Because she had no home of her own, after her first husband's death, Mrs Pendarves spent time living with various relatives and friends. To begin with, she lived with her aunt and uncle Stanley, and after her aunt's death, she spent time in Ireland with the family of her friend Mrs Donellan. In Ireland, Mrs Pendarves made the acquaintance of Dr Patrick Delany, an Irish clergyman who was already married to a rich widow. It was not until 1743 that on a trip to London Dr Delany proposed to Mrs Pendarves, much to the dismay of her family. She chose to take Dr Delany as her husband, and the two were married in June of 1743.
The Delanys passed a year in London before moving to Dublin, where Dr Delany had a home. Both husband and wife were very interested in botany and gardening: "Their mutual pleasure in their garden at Delville near Dublin in particular, his encouragement of her gardening, painting, shell-work and needlework resulted in a surge of activity in a variety of media in all of which the basic theme was the flower, whether in stocking the Delville garden, painting garden landscapes, decorating interiors with shells, or working embroideries." After twenty-five years of marriage, most of it spent in Ireland, Dr Delany died in Bath, England, on May 6, 1768 at the age of eighty-four, and Mrs Delany found herself, once again, a widow.
Later life
As a widow, Mary Delany spent a lot of time with the Margaret Bentinck, Dowager Duchess of PortlandMargaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland
Margaret Cavendish Bentinck, Duchess of Portland , styled Lady Margaret Harley before 1734, Duchess of Portland from 1734 to her husband's death in 1761, and Dowager Duchess of Portland from 1761 until her own death in 1785...
, a close friend. The two shared a kinship in botany, often going out to look for specific specimens. It was during her stay with the Duchess that Mary became acquainted with two well-known botanists of the time Joseph Banks
Joseph Banks
Sir Joseph Banks, 1st Baronet, GCB, PRS was an English naturalist, botanist and patron of the natural sciences. He took part in Captain James Cook's first great voyage . Banks is credited with the introduction to the Western world of eucalyptus, acacia, mimosa and the genus named after him,...
and Daniel Solander
Daniel Solander
Daniel Carlsson Solander or Daniel Charles Solander was a Swedish naturalist and an apostle of Carl Linnaeus. Solander was the first university educated scientist to set foot on Australian soil.-Biography:...
. This contact with the botanists only encouraged Mary's interest in botany and also encouraged the knowledge on which many of her flower paper-cuttings are based.
Career as an artist
Mary had always been an avid artist, but it was during her marriage to Dr Delany that she finally had the time to hone her skills. She was an avid gardener, something that she shared with Dr Delany, and was also good at needlework, drawing, painting, and cutting paper. Mary is most known for her paper-cutting, "For these 'mosaicks' are coloured paper representing not only conspicuous details but also contrasting colours or shades of the same colour so that every effect of light is caught"In 1771, Mary began to create cut out paper artworks (decoupage
Decoupage
Decoupage is the art of decorating an object by gluing colored paper cutouts onto it in combination with special paint effects, gold leaf and so on. Commonly an object like a small box or an item of furniture is covered by cutouts from magazines or from purpose-manufactured papers...
) as was the fashion for ladies of the court. Her works were exceptionally detailed and botanically accurate depictions of plants. She used tissue paper
Tissue paper
Tissue paper is a lightweight paper or, light crêpe paper. Tissue can be made both from virgin and recycled paper pulp.-Properties:Key properties are: strength, absorbency, basis weight, thickness , brightness, stretch, appearance and comfort....
and hand colouration to produce these pieces. She created 1,700 of these works, calling them her "Paper Mosaiks [sic]", from the age of 71 to 88 when her eyesight failed her. During this time, Mary made nearly 1,000 of the paper flowers.
"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..." Mary took great care to make sure that each of her flowers were correct, in number of stamens and petals. She also became so well-known that many donors began to send her flowers to cut. They can still be seen in the Enlightenment Gallery at the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
today. Upon her death, "The ten volumes of Mrs. Delany's Flora were inherited by Lady Llanover, the daughter of Georgina Mary Ann Port. Lady Llanover, who died in 1896 at the age of ninety-four, bequeathed these volumes to the British Museum..."
When the Dowager Duchess died, George and Charlotte gave her a small house at Windsor
Windsor, Berkshire
Windsor is an affluent suburban town and unparished area in the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead in Berkshire, England. It is widely known as the site of Windsor Castle, one of the official residences of the British Royal Family....
and a pension of 300 pounds a year. Mary had become familiar with the Queen Charlotte during her time paper-cutting, and while living in the house at Windsor, became an important part within the King and Queen's lives. The King and Queen were great supporters of Mary's paper-cutting, "The King and Queen...always desired that any curious or beautiful plants should be transmitted to Mrs. Delany when in blossom."
Frances Burney (Madame D'Arblay) was introduced to her in 1783, and frequently visited her at her London home and at Windsor, and owed to her friendship her court appointment. Delany, in her eighties at this time, had a reputation for cutting out and making the intricate paper mosaics (collage
Collage
A collage is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole....
s) now in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...
. She had known many of the luminaries of her day, had corresponded with Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift
Jonathan Swift was an Irish satirist, essayist, political pamphleteer , poet and cleric who became Dean of St...
, Sir Joseph Banks, and Young, 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). Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
calls her "a real fine lady, the model of an accomplished woman of former times".
In the year 1980, a descendant of Mary Delany's sister Anne, Ruth Hayden, published a book on Delany's work: Mrs. Delany and Her Flower Collages, which was reissued in 2000 as Mrs. Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers (British Museum Press).
External links
- Example of Mary's paper mosaic (British Museum)
- http://www.mcclelland.com/catalog/display.pperl?isbn=9780771070334 (The Paper Garden: Mrs. Delany Begins Her Life's Work at 72 by Molly Peacock)