Mary Delany Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, Collage Artist

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      • MARY DELANY (1700 - 1788) A collection comprising; six framed silhouette portraits; a collection of sketches and caricatures including examples inscribed 'Bulstrode 1742' and other examples with publishing date '1st June 1780' and one titled 'I have
        May. 01, 2024

        MARY DELANY (1700 - 1788) A collection comprising; six framed silhouette portraits; a collection of sketches and caricatures including examples inscribed 'Bulstrode 1742' and other examples with publishing date '1st June 1780' and one titled 'I have

        Est: €2,000 - €3,000

        MARY DELANY (1700 - 1788) A collection comprising; six framed silhouette portraits; a collection of sketches and caricatures including examples inscribed 'Bulstrode 1742' and other examples with publishing date '1st June 1780' and one titled 'I have lost my stomach' Note: Bulstrode was the home of her dearest friend, Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, with whom she spent seventeen summers after Dr Delany's death in 1768. Provenance: by descent through the family of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat, Wiltshire, to Lord Christopher Thynne, from whose estate acquired by the current owner ‘One of the most prolific and well-known amateur artists of the eighteenth century excelling particularly in the applied arts’ (AAI, vol. 2, p. 231), Mary Delany spent some twenty-five years in Ireland having married the clergyman, and friend of Dean Swift, Patrick Delany. Though closely associated with Ireland she was, however, from a notably well-connected English aristocratic family the Granvilles, though her father, a younger son, did not inherit rank or great fortune. Demonstrating her versatility this remarkable group of drawings also nicely illustrates Mrs Delany’s sense of humour and is revealing of her links with two of eighteenth-century England’s great houses. It comprises small drawings, silhouettes and caricatures, some taken from the life and some copied from other sources. The sheets have come from the Thynne family of Longleat, via the late Lord Christopher Thynne, brother of Alexander, the colourful 7th Marquess of Bath. The drawings range over more than four decades, from two drawings which are dated 1742, to a copy of a James Gillray caricature, I have lost my Stomach’, the original of which was published in June 1780. Indicative of the interlocking aristocratic circles in which the artist operated, some of the drawings are inscribed as having been executed at the Duchess of Portland’s house at Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire where Delany spent a portion of almost every year from the 1730s until the duchess’s death in 1785. The Bulstrode set was exceptionally cultivated, and the importance of the house and its denizens to Delany’s creative life has recently been well articulated. There Mrs Delany entered a circle: as far reaching as the American Colonies and the South Seas. Along with the duchess’s other properties in London and at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, Bulstrode was a preeminent site for all facets of curiosity. The duchess’s collections were astonishing in their breadth and depth; they contained antiquities such as the Portland Vase, objets de virtù mineralogy, entomology and botany. (Mark Laird & Alicia Weisberg-Roberts (eds), Mrs Delany and her Circle (New Haven and London, 2009), p. 9. Bulstrode served as an ‘incubator of Linnean botany’ in England and the scholarly pursuits conducted there were formative influences on Delany’s great botanical works. Pleasingly, however, one of the drawings in the present lot, inscribed in the artist’s hand ‘Bulstrode 1742,’ shows that less taxing country house pursuits were also on offer, as a portly man wearing a check coat or dressing gown and sitting at a table puzzles over a word game. The drawings’ provenance to Lord Christopher Thynne from Longleat, the great ‘prodigy’ house in Wiltshire, is highly suggestive of their origin as Delany was closely associated with the Thynne family throughout her long life. The wife of Thomas the 3rd Viscount Weymouth (‘chronically indolent and by no means abstemious’) was the daughter of Delany’s great friend the Duchess of Portland (ibid., 41) while Weymouth’s mother, Louisa Granville, was Delany’s cousin. Indeed, Delany’s connections with the Thynnes went further back and she visited first when she was seventeen. Her uncle, Lord George Lansdowne had married the widowed Lady Mary Thynne whose husband had been the first Viscount Weymouth and this ‘began the association of Mary’s family with Longleat, (ibid., 42) which in time ‘reached a third and fourth generation’ (ibid., 58.) Still in the collection of the Marquis of Bath at Longleat, is a silhouette by Delany of the Weymouth family at leisure, with two of their daughters playing chess and the six silhouette offered here almost certainly also represent members of the Thynne family. Mrs Delany’s silhouettes are extremely rare – though of course they share a similar cutting technique to her famous flower mosaics – making the identification of this set of six a very fascinating addition to her documented oeuvre.

        Adam's
      • MARY DELANY (1700 - 1788) A collection comprising; six framed silhouette portraits; a collection of sketches and caricatures including examples inscribed 'Bulstrode 1742' and other examples with publishing date '1st June 1780' and one titled 'I have
        Oct. 18, 2022

        MARY DELANY (1700 - 1788) A collection comprising; six framed silhouette portraits; a collection of sketches and caricatures including examples inscribed 'Bulstrode 1742' and other examples with publishing date '1st June 1780' and one titled 'I have

        Est: €2,000 - €3,000

        MARY DELANY (1700 - 1788) A collection comprising; six framed silhouette portraits; a collection of sketches and caricatures including examples inscribed 'Bulstrode 1742' and other examples with publishing date '1st June 1780' and one titled 'I have lost my stomach' Note: Bulstrode was the home of her dearest friend, Margaret Bentinck, Duchess of Portland, with whom she spent seventeen summers after Dr Delany's death in 1768. Provenance: by descent through the family of the Marquess of Bath, Longleat, Wiltshire, to Lord Christopher Thynne, from whose estate acquired by the current owner ‘One of the most prolific and well-known amateur artists of the eighteenth century excelling particularly in the applied arts’ (AAI, vol. 2, p. 231), Mary Delany spent some twenty-five years in Ireland having married the clergyman, and friend of Dean Swift, Patrick Delany. Though closely associated with Ireland she was, however, from a notably well-connected English aristocratic family the Granvilles, though her father, a younger son, did not inherit rank or great fortune. Demonstrating her versatility this remarkable group of drawings also nicely illustrates Mrs Delany’s sense of humour and is revealing of her links with two of eighteenth-century England’s great houses. It comprises small drawings, silhouettes and caricatures, some taken from the life and some copied from other sources. The sheets have come from the Thynne family of Longleat, via the late Lord Christopher Thynne, brother of Alexander, the colourful 7th Marquess of Bath. The drawings range over more than four decades, from two drawings which are dated 1742, to a copy of a James Gillray caricature, I have lost my Stomach’, the original of which was published in June 1780. Indicative of the interlocking aristocratic circles in which the artist operated, some of the drawings are inscribed as having been executed at the Duchess of Portland’s house at Bulstrode in Buckinghamshire where Delany spent a portion of almost every year from the 1730s until the duchess’s death in 1785. The Bulstrode set was exceptionally cultivated, and the importance of the house and its denizens to Delany’s creative life has recently been well articulated. There Mrs Delany entered a circle: as far reaching as the American Colonies and the South Seas. Along with the duchess’s other properties in London and at Welbeck in Nottinghamshire, Bulstrode was a preeminent site for all facets of curiosity. The duchess’s collections were astonishing in their breadth and depth; they contained antiquities such as the Portland Vase, objets de virtù mineralogy, entomology and botany. (Mark Laird & Alicia Weisberg-Roberts (eds), Mrs Delany and her Circle (New Haven and London, 2009), p. 9. Bulstrode served as an ‘incubator of Linnean botany’ in England and the scholarly pursuits conducted there were formative influences on Delany’s great botanical works. Pleasingly, however, one of the drawings in the present lot, inscribed in the artist’s hand ‘Bulstrode 1742,’ shows that less taxing country house pursuits were also on offer, as a portly man wearing a check coat or dressing gown and sitting at a table puzzles over a word game. The drawings’ provenance to Lord Christopher Thynne from Longleat, the great ‘prodigy’ house in Wiltshire, is highly suggestive of their origin as Delany was closely associated with the Thynne family throughout her long life. The wife of Thomas the 3rd Viscount Weymouth (‘chronically indolent and by no means abstemious’) was the daughter of Delany’s great friend the Duchess of Portland (ibid., 41) while Weymouth’s mother, Louisa Granville, was Delany’s cousin. Indeed, Delany’s connections with the Thynnes went further back and she visited first when she was seventeen. Her uncle, Lord George Lansdowne had married the widowed Lady Mary Thynne whose husband had been the first Viscount Weymouth and this ‘began the association of Mary’s family with Longleat, (ibid., 42) which in time ‘reached a third and fourth generation’ (ibid., 58.) Still in the collection of the Marquis of Bath at Longleat, is a silhouette by Delany of the Weymouth family at leisure, with two of their daughters playing chess and the six silhouette offered here almost certainly also represent members of the Thynne family. Mrs Delany’s silhouette’s are extremely rare – though of course they share a similar cutting technique to her famous flower mosaics – making the identification of this set of six a very fascinating addition to her documented oeuvre.

        Adam's
      • STYLE OF MARY DELANY (British, 1700-1788)
        Sep. 11, 2015

        STYLE OF MARY DELANY (British, 1700-1788)

        Est: $600 - $800

        Seventeen hand-cut and colored paper collages, late 19th/early 20th c.; Each titled with botanical and common names; 13 1/2" x 10" (sheet, each)

        Rago Arts and Auction Center
      • DELANY, MARY.
        Jul. 13, 2006

        DELANY, MARY.

        Est: £5,000 - £7,000

        'MARIANNA', a fair copy in a single hand, with a title page reading "Marianna. 1759" underneath which has been added, in the hand of queen charlotte, "Written by Mrs Delany.", paginated, red ruled margins, 75 pages plus blanks, 4to, c.1780, in half red morocco over marbled boards, gilt edges, boards slightly stained LITERATURE The Autobiography and Correspondence of Mary Granville, Mrs Delany, ed. Lady Llanover, 6 vols (1861-2); Ruth Hayden, Mrs Delany: Her Life and Flowers (1980) NOTE a fine manuscript, previously unrecorded and once the property of queen charlotte, of an apparently unpublished story by the artist, court favourite, and prolific correspondent, mary delany. The story traces the development of a woman, Marianna, from childhood to adulthood and marriage. It is a conventional romance narrative which provides many insights into Delany's thoughts on children's development. The narrative is centred on two ruptures in the family unit. In the first, the young Marianna crosses a stile against the command of her parents and is then kidnapped by gypsies. In the second episode, the underlying subject of which is emergent sexuality, a thirteen year-old Marianna is chased by a "frightfull Bull" into a dark and threatening forest, where she is found in a cave by a group of sailors: "She lay like a poor distressed hare, panting with fear, not daring to move, but at last she heard one of the Men say to the other; A Prize, a Prize! & immediately found herself seized in a very ruffianly manner..." The events that follow lead eventually to Marianna's meeting with her future husband. So, whilst obedience to parental authority is a central theme of the story, the occasions when the child passes beyond parental control are shown by Delany to be crucial to her development to adulthood. The story is set among the upper classes of Georgian England, and Delany's detailed description of the grand country houses and castles inhabited by her characters are another point of interest. She provides careful descriptions of gardens, galleries, parlours, and libraries; rooms furnished with musical instruments, prints, books, and "Cabinets, & glass-Cases, filled with natural & artificial curiosities". Delany wrote this story in 1759, apparently for herself and her sister Anne (Llanover, vol. 3, p.580). For the character of Marianna herself, she presumably had Anne's thirteen year-old daughter Mary in mind. The manuscript known to Llanover is now at the Lilly Library in Indiana. The present manuscript was almost certainly produced later, in the 1770s or 80s, when Mary Delany was a close personal friend of the royal family; an appropriate gift for a Queen who was also the mother of girls entering adolescence. It is, therefore, not only remarkable as an unpublished story, but also as an intimate gift within the royal circle. For letters and other literary works by Mrs Delany, see lot 111.

        Sotheby's
      • A RARE PAIR OF GEORGE III PAPER COLLAGES OF FLOWERS ATTRIBUTED TO MARY DELANY CIRCA 1777
        Oct. 20, 2003

        A RARE PAIR OF GEORGE III PAPER COLLAGES OF FLOWERS ATTRIBUTED TO MARY DELANY CIRCA 1777

        Est: $5,000 - $7,000

        DETAILED DESCRIPTION depicting Jasminum Odoratissimum and Aquilegia Vulgaris ; both with inked labels describing the flowers. LITERATURE Ruth Hayden, Mrs. Delany her life and flowers, 1980 CATALOGUE NOTE Described by Madame d'Arblay as 'the fairest model of female excellence of the days that were passed,' Mary Delany (1700-1788), wife of Dr. Patrick Delany, an Irish clergyman, is remembered through the six volumes of her letters which have come down to us. These show her as intelligent and witty, famed for her association with such figures as Georg Handel, William Hogarth, Jonathan Swift and Sir Joseph Banks. She was admired by the Royal family, such that Opie painted her portrait for George III, who called her his 'dearest Mrs Delany', and was offered a little house at Windsor by him when her great friend, the Duchess of Portland died in July 1785. She spent the last three years of her life there. On one occasion she offered the Queen as a 'lowly tribute of her humble duty and earnest gratitude' a picture of flowers assembled from fine hand-coloured tissue paper ? a genre she described as her 'paper mosaicks'. She only began producing these botanically accurate images at the age of seventy-two, and produced near a thousand in the next ten years. Many were made at Bulstrode, the home of the Dowager Duchess of Portland, a friend of Sir Joseph Banks, who supplied Mrs. Delany with species of flowers from around the world. Near blindness forced her to stop producing them in 1782. Noted by Darwin, these images had come to recommend her to botanists as well as the history of the decorative arts. Indeed, even Horace Walpole wrote of her work that it was made with a 'precision and truth unparalleled'. Most are preserved in the collection of the British Museum.

        Sotheby's
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