In education, Delany was the picture of English upper-class accomplishment. She could paint, cut paper fashionably, speak French, dance and embroider. However, despite her aristocratic upbringing, she was extremely vocal about her opposition to marriage and had multiple relationships with women outside of her two marriages. In her published letters, she describes marriage as an ‘irksome prison’ and, when considering female friendship, wrote: ‘A fairy spot of ground to be enjoyed with a friend is preferable to the whole world without that happiness.’
Carl Linnaeus’ Systema Naturae, first published in 1735, was a book that attempted to name and classify plants and animals. Linnaeus suggested new ways of documenting species with just two Latin words, in contrast to most naturalists of the time, who largely used anatomical drawings. Furthermore, he developed his own theory of sexual reproduction in plants, likening it to human sexuality: he associated the pistil with the female reproductive system and the stamen to the male. What he called the flower’s ‘nuptials’ happened on the ‘marriage bed’ of the leaves in the ‘wedding dress’ of the petals, and the flowers were named husband and wife. Flowers without obvious reproductive organs were named ‘cryptogamian’ or ‘plants that marry secretly’. He became infamous in Sweden for this scandalous view of flowers, but his ideas were adopted in Britain and have become the basis on which we name specimens today. To us and to an 18th century audience (admittedly for different reasons), Linnaeus’s sexualisation of the flower seems overtly ugly: the scientific method is obstructed by the perverted sexualisation of flowers, while simultaneously marriage is portrayed as something rooted in nature. Delany’s work also delights in the sexual imagery of the flower but expresses this by calling on natural elements – desire, love, sex – instead of marriage. Her collages can be seen as a direct response to Linnaeus’ work: they criticise his views on women and his classification system for the natural world, which emphasises order instead of the diversity that exists within both nature and society.
Delany’s work is also a response to the Royal Academy, which was founded in 1768 and quickly made clear the position of women artists within it: barred from life class and limited to displaying only still life in exhibition at the gallery. After a period, only ‘women’s crafts’ (embroidery, miniatures and pastels) could be shown; these were considered inferior to the tradition of oil painting. Delany’s work, however, is a technical masterclass in paper cutting, which had been a pursuit of hers since her teenage years. She would wash the paper with Indian ink; then, she would dye paper or cut up wallpaper to build up multiple layers of tissue paper, creating paper ‘mosaiks’. She thus turned a ‘woman’s pursuit’ into both a serious art form and a commentary on her life. The accuracy and care she took with her images earned them respect among naturalists: experts would often send her flowers to be made into collages. Delany’s works freeze time by creating a pure, focused world, with the specimen as both an object of science and an object of beauty.
Image credit: Aphrodite of Knidos (copy), 1st Century AD, The Walters Art Museum, CC0, Public Domain
Delany’s enjoyment of the bright colours, lush flowers and exotic specimens that were sent to her sets her work apart from other floral images of the time. The clear-cut black background she used was unique, emphasising the lushness of the colours and allowing the image to flit between being a work of art and a scientific study. It is important to note that her work is not just imitation: it reveals a thorough understanding of floral anatomy combined with artistic flair. Delany’s insistence on contrasting the strength and vividity of colour with the structural, harsh lines in her collages isolates her art as something that is deeply concerned with accuracy but is also an expression of her sexuality. In addition, while other works from this period present the flowers as chastely closed, usually from the back or side, Delany splays open her flowers, exposing the pistil and stamen and using the petals to build a dynamic but encoded sexual message.
For example, in Magnolia Grandiflora Delany peels back each petal so the viewer can access the organs buried within the dense, open petals – a parody of the wedding dress that Linnaeus imposed on the female flower. Her active manipulation of the petals reminds us of the creative power of the artist, in this case a woman given strength and domination through her craft. Meanwhile, one leaf is raised in mock propriety, a reference to the arms of classical sculptures which allow the viewer to observe something we know is meant to be hidden.
The Opium Poppy was seen as an ‘unshapely’ flower, as demonstrated by this later work by Redouté [see below]: the flower is turned away from the viewer as if ashamed. In contrast, Delany recreates the poppy elegantly and alluringly by twisting the leaves around the stem. She curls them so that they stretch backward before the explosion of red – a dynamic, active part of the composition that creates a sense of movement and vibrancy – and the petals themselves seem to bend and turn with the arresting power they are given by their bright red colour on a rich black background. The seedhead and bud reflect one another, the beginning and end of life staring one another down, as they create the triangular composition that symbolises femininity.
In her works, Delany uses Linnaeus’s language in a way that would horrify him (as he described women as wives only), simultaneously expressing her own sexuality in an artistically sophisticated manner that he would not have been able to achieve. She has taken an infantilised female pastime that was considered inferior and unthreatening, and completely adapted it. Delany, using and manipulating flowers as they progress through stages of development, expresses the peak of openness and beauty. She owns and controls the natural world in a way Linnaeus would have said only God could, presenting a wordless declaration of feminine unity, power and sexuality.
Claudia (VI)
Photo by Birmingham Museums Trust on Unsplash
Image: Opium Poppy, Redouté, 1835, Biodiversity Heritage Library, CC0, Public Domain