Lot 455: A RARE PAIR OF GEORGE III PAPER COLLAGES OF FLOWERS ATTRIBUTED TO MARY DELANY CIRCA 1777

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.

<p>sight: 9 3/4 by 6 1/2 in. (24.6cm by 16.4cm)</p>