Older Artist Spotlight: Mary Delany—The Grandmother of Mixed Media
Ryan Reid
May 7, 2025
Step back to Georgian England for a moment: wax tapers flicker, flower-filled walled gardens perfume the air, and a 72-year-old gentlewoman leans over her bedside table, holding a crimson geranium petal beside a scrap of red paper. In that quiet, ordinary instant, Mary Granville Pendarves Delany—widowed, witty, and well read—discovers a brand-new art form that will outlive her by centuries.
A Life Woven Through History
Born May 4, 1700, Mary Delany came of age amid Handel’s London and the rise of botanical science. Her early adulthood was devoted to courtly duties and two marriages; artistic pursuits stayed tucked away like pressed blossoms between book pages. Only after her second husband’s death did Mary, at last, turn steadily to making.
“I have invented a new way of imitating flowers,” she enthused in a 1772 letter to her niece, sounding as thrilled as any first-year art student.
The Birth of the “Paper Mosaicks”
Mary’s epiphany was as simple as color-matching a petal to paper, yet her execution was meticulous. She hand-dyed scraps of stationery, wallpaper, even old envelopes, then snipped and layered hundreds of tiny shapes onto black, India-ink-washed backgrounds. The deep ground made each bloom glow as though moonlit.
Rhododendron maximum (1778) and Rosa gallica (1782) are two of her nearly 985 surviving works—so botanically precise that 18th-century naturalists consulted them like field guides. Today the British Museum preserves the full series; crowds still press close, convinced they’re gazing at watercolors rather than paper.
Why Her Story Still Blossoms
Mary Delany’s legacy whispers a comforting truth: creativity has no sell-by date. In an era when women’s pursuits were often confined to embroidery hoops, she invented a mixed-media technique that predates modern collage by more than a century. Her late-life bloom reminds us that fresh chapters await, whether at 17 or 97.
At Bream, we celebrate that ageless spark. Feel the pull of creativity? Our on-demand watercolor class will guide you step by step or our poetry class will have you composing your first poem—projects Mary herself might have enjoyed in her garden studio.
Keep Exploring
Read:The Paper Garden by Molly Peacock—part biography, part art history, wholly enchanting.
Make: Gather wallpaper scraps, bakery tissue, even old love letters, and let color memory lead the way—just as it did for Mary on that geranium-tinted evening.
May her story nudge you to start (or restart) whatever creative venture has been waiting patiently on your own bedside table.
