Two things for Tuesday
A new Difference-Maker.
“An ingenious mind is never too old to learn.”
Mary Granville Delaney
Mary delaney, british artist, 1700-1788
The next time you slap a half-dozen pieces together and call it collage (What? Me?), have a thought for Mary Delaney. A difference-maker for the art world.
Mary was a late-bloomer (pun, you shall see, intended.) At 72, having had a challenging life, on her own then, Mary invented collage. She didn’t know that, of course, or call it that, but she was a pioneer in that popular artistic endeavor that marries scraps and often-unrelated pieces into something new. She called her art “mosaik,” but we would call it mixed-media collage. In the 18th century, it was tough enough to live to age 72, let alone create something new in the world.
While enjoying her garden one day, she noticed that a piece of paper close by matched exactly the petal of a flower. She was inspired to create the first of almost a thousand cut-paper botanical collages in exacting detail. She used hand-dyed paper, wallpaper scraps, and other papers to create beautiful and accurate botanical works of art until her death at age 88.
“Over the top of her petal template she would typically paste a multitude of smaller cuts to create shading and depth, which she then touched up with watercolor. One flower alone could easily contain more than 200 bits of paper” (guardian.com).
Her work was noticed by the social set, including a naturalist who organized them into albums that were eventually bequeathed to the British Museum. Even today, visitors to the museum can see her art.
She had been married off at age 17 for cash to a lecherous drunk in his sixties (“my jailor”) by her father, a disgraced and bankrupt former aristocrat, and had little desire to repeat marital unhappiness. Widowed at 23, left out of his will and penniless, she reinvented herself, savoring her independence and several platonic relationships. She had friendships with Jonathan Swift, John Wesley, Handel, and other notables, but turned down at least eight proposals from, among them, “a toxic bachelor,” another “silly” man, a gloomy religious poet, and and an offer from a widower with five children. She had an artistic soul and was an expressive writer. In her forties, she met and married a fellow garden lover and Irish clergyman; that marriage lasted 25 years until his death. They were passionate about their lush gardens and botanical endeavors. She lived her last 20 years widowed for a second time but immensely immersed in her own independence, a love of fine art and decoration, and flower and plant life.
I don’t often refer you to Wikipedia but I did enjoy their summary of her. I got most of my information from a book in my personal collection, A Glorious Freedom: Older Women Leading Extraordinary Lives and the British Museum site. This “late-bloomers” site was also interesting! Yet another woman previously unknown to me, but about whom much has been written.
Here is a Goodreads review of Molly Peacock book on Mary Delaney.
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