Mary Delany

Mary Delany, 82 years old John Opie , 1782

Mary Delany , ad. Mary Pendarves , b. Mary Granville (born May 14, 1700 in Coulston, † April 15, 1788 in Windsor ) was an English painter, horticultural artist and letter writer.

Live and act

Mary Granville was born in a small country house in Wiltshire to the daughter of Bernard Granville, grandson of the famous Sir Bevil Granville . As a young girl she met Georg Friedrich Handel when he was ten years old when he was in London for the first time. She became Handel's most loyal admirer and the contact would last until his death in 1759.

Her first husband was Alexander Pendarves, her second the Irish clergyman Patrick Delany, dean of County Down in Ireland . Under the name of her second husband, Mrs. Delany, she became known as the author of a six-volume autobiography and correspondence with aristocratic relatives and friends, and others published in 1861. a. the royal family, Jonathan Swift and Handel. We owe her not only personal comments on the art and science of the time in general, but also on Handel and the performances of his works. This extensive work is also an excellent resource for studying domestic life at Windsor Castle during the reign of George III. and the Queen Charlotte .

Mary Delany became famous in a late career as the creator of paper-cut flowers, now on display in the British Museum . With detailed naturalism and extraordinary dexterity, she made over 1000 decoupages from sometimes several hundred painted paper leaves glued together on a black background, which imitated all of the flora known at the time. The work also attempted to document and catalog new botanical knowledge using the collage technique - she herself referred to her paper mosaics as Flora Delanica . The royal family valued her art very much and put a small house in Windsor at her disposal.

Mary Delany was also a member of the London Blue Stocking Society . George Ballard dedicated his main work Memoirs of several ladies of Great Britain, who have been celebrated for their writings or skill in the learned languages, arts and sciences to her. ( 1752 ).

literature

• Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany: With Interesting Reminiscences of King George the Third and Queen Charlotte ; Cambridge University Press, 2011, ISBN 978-1-108-03838-6
• Mark Laird and Alicia Weisberg-Roberts: Mrs. Delany and her Circle , London 2009, ISBN 978-0-300-14279-2
• Ruth Hayden: Mrs Delany: Her Life and Her Flowers , British Museum Press 2000, ISBN 978-0-7141-2627-2
• Ellen T. Harris: Mary Delany in: Landgraf, Annette and Vickers, David: The Cambridge Handel Encyclopedia , Cambridge University Press 2009, ISBN 978-0-521-88192-0 , pp. 186f.
• Clarissa Campbell Orr: Mrs. Delany. A life , New Haven: Yale University Press 2019, ISBN 9780300161137 .

Web links

Commons : Mary Delany  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files