The Paper Garden: An Artist Begins Her Life's Work at 72

About this book

Mary Delany was seventy-two years old when she noticed a petal drop from a geranium. In a flash of inspiration she picked up her scissors and cut out a paper replica of the petal inventing the art of collage. It was the summer of 1772 in England. During the next ten years she completed nearly a thousand cut-paper botanicals (which she called mosaicks) so accurate that botanists still refer to them. Poet-biographer Molly Peacock uses close-ups of these brilliant collages in The Paper Garden to track the extraordinary life of Delany friend of Swift Handel Hogarth and even Queen Charlotte and King George III.How did this remarkable role model for late blooming manage it? After a disastrous teenage marriage to a drunken sixty-one-year-old squire she took control of her own life pursuing creative projects spurning suitors and gaining friends. At forty-three she married Jonathan Swifts friend Dr. Patrick Delany and lived in Ireland in a true expression of