Most people don't begin an artistic career in their 70s, but Mary Delany wasn't your typical 18th century upper-crust aristocrat. Delany, whose work is in the British Museum produced more than 1,000 pieces of botanical art (using a method known as paper "mosaik") over a 10-year period.

    Verna Linney, a York University doctoral candidate in women's studies, is researching Delany and the attitudes and circumstances that helped shape 18th century women's art, and influence women's role in the science of the time. "For aristocratic women interested in science, or art, there weren't the professional networks that men had established. I'm interested in how women encouraged each other both in art and science."

    While Delany was a skilled artist, all her work was private, notes Linney. "Gentlewomen of the time did not display either their talents or their work in public." Although her material was never shown, it had a significant influence on later scientists. Since Delany dated her pictures, later botanists used it to document when certain plants began to arrive in England.

    Delany's floral art was painstakingly crafted. Most botanical renderings are life size and involved gluing together hundreds of tiny slivers of dyed paper. Delany began each piece by placing a plant sample on her table, disassembling it to examine each of its separate parts, and then using the paper to recreate each minuscule variation in colour.

    "Sometimes she used hundreds of slivers of paper to reproduce a single flower," says Linney. "The results are amazingly detailed and botanically accurate."

Flower images courtesy of : The British Museum