At the age of 72, Mary Delany (1700–1788) embarked on a remarkable project: over the next decade she created nearly a thousand cut-paper illustrations of flowers and plants, stopping only when her eyesight failed in 1784. Carefully cutting and pasting coloured papers onto black backgrounds, she created images that were not just exquisitely beautiful but also valued for their scientific accuracy. Mrs Delany’s ‘paper mosaicks’, as she called them, are now housed in the Department of Prints and Drawings at the British Museum. This talk will explore how these impressive works were made and connect them to wider histories of botanical illustration and female artistic achievement.

Dr Francesca Kaes is Monument Trust Curator of British Drawings in the Department of Prints and Drawings, British Museum.

1730 - 1800 - Exhibition entry for our current exhibition; The botanical world of Mary Delany and Georgie Hopton – A Domestic Arrangement

1800 - 1900 - Talk by Dr Francesca Kaes with time for questions after