Botanical Study

Botanical Study

Mary Delany

An item at Metropolitan Museum of Art

The celebrated diarist and amateur artist Mary Delany ranks among the most accomplished paper-cutters of all time. She developed the technique of "paper-mosaick" at the age of seventy-two, when her diminishing eyesight hindered her embroidery. Working to scale directly from a plant specimen, Delany cut and assembled dozens or even hundreds of minute pieces of colored tissue paper to create a single image of precise botanical accuracy. Encouraged by King George III and Queen Charlotte (who took a strong personal interest in her skills and sent her work to the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew), Delany produced nearly a thousand sheets for her "Flora Delanica" in a little more than a decade. Typically, she labeled her work on the back and arranged her collection (now in the British Museum) according to Carl Linnaeus's sexual system of plant classification. The present example of a type of geranium is not identified, perhaps because given to Lord and Lady Bute on a visit to Luton Hoo, where she worked from specimens in the gardens. It came to the Museum inserted into an album that belonged to John Stuart, 3rd earl of Bute, containing designs for the gardens and buildings at Kew.

Drawings and Prints

An exhibit at Metropolitan Museum of Art

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The Department’s vast collection of works on paper comprises approximately 21,000 drawings, 1.2 million prints, and 12,000 illustrated books created in Europe and the Americas from about 1400 to the present day. Since its foundation in 1916, the Department has been committed to collecting a wide range of works on paper, which includes both pieces that are incredibly rare and lauded for their aesthetic appeal, as well as material that is more popular, functional, and ephemeral. The broad scope of the department’s collecting encourages questions of connoisseurship as well as those pertaining to function and context, and demonstrates the vital role that prints, drawings, and illustrated books have played throughout history.