Mrs. Delany and Her Circle (Yale Center for British Art)
Mary Delany (1700–1788), a prominent and accomplished Englishwoman whose friends included Queen Charlotte and George III, combined science and craft in her many creative endeavors. Smart, inquisitive, industrious, sociable, and twice widowed, Delany kept up a lively correspondence, gardened, drew, painted, and excelled in many handicrafts, including shellwork, needlework, and, most famously, her paper collages. As Horace Walpole wrote with great admiration, Delany, then in her seventies, “invented the art of paper-mosaic” and rapidly constructed nearly 1,000 botanical collages of such precision and beauty they never fail to astonish viewers. Although she was part of her era’s leading circle of writers, scientists, and artists, the full story of her life, achievements, and influence has never before been told as sensitively and thoroughly as it is in this sumptuously illustrated volume. From a step-by-step explanation of Delany’s paper-mosaic technique to appreciation for her dazzling floral textile designs to a discussion of the social role of women’s handicrafts, this portrait of a “lover and conscientious observer of the natural world” and consummate craftswoman is superbly illuminating. --Donna Seaman