The botanical world of Mary Delany and Georgie Hopton – a domestic arrangement

January 2025, Bath UK – Opening 15 March 2025, The Gallery at No.1 Royal Crescent in Bath will present a unique, collaborative project focused on the work of two women artists, Mary Delany (1700–1788) and Georgie Hopton (1967–) curated by Ingrid Swenson.

This meeting of artistic minds across two and a half centuries will combine the display of the British Museum Touring Exhibition The botanical world of Mary Delany, installed in conjunction with artworks and newly commissioned designs for wallpaper and fabric by Georgie Hopton. Connecting these two artists is their shared passion for and knowledge of plants and specifically flowers, explored with their creative skill and ability for exquisite handcrafting.

Delany’s work will be displayed as high-resolution digital prints of the artist’s original collages, which she described as ‘paper mosaiks’. These artworks were created using a painstaking technique she developed involving delicately painting, cutting, layering and pasting fine tissue paper against a dramatic black background to ‘imitate flowers’. Mary Delany began creating these stunningly lifelike and scientifically accurate specimens at the age of 72. Within a decade she had produced over 900 artworks, only stopping when deteriorating eyesight made it impossible to continue.

Delany’s original artworks have previously remained largely unseen by the public due to their fragile nature and existence within bound albums in the collection of the British Museum. With over 30 prints on display, this exhibition provides an opportunity for visitors to experience these superb collages as never before. A portrait of Mary Delany by John Opie painted in 1782 hangs in the Withdrawing Room of the historic house at No.1 Royal Crescent, providing an ideal context to encounter this ground-breaking 18th century woman artist’s work.

For Georgie Hopton, flowers and plant life are astonishing creations of nature, embodying both eternal beauty and the transience of all existence, condensing the cycles of life and death. Parallel to this passion for the natural world, she has consistently been attracted to pattern and texture as found in different materials from paper, fabric, string and ribbon. This has led to her fascination for fakery, pastiche and simulated surfaces or objects. Through her dual preoccupation with nature and artifice, Hopton has developed a distinct language of collage that explores the intersection between the fine and applied arts through its application in design and manufacture.

Hopton’s fascination with Georgian art, design, fashion and style and her great admiration of Delany’s work is long held. In a dual role as artist and curator, Hopton has chosen the Delany prints for display from the British Museum selection. With generous support from Art Fund, Hopton has been commissioned to create two new designs for handprinted wallpaper and fabric produced by Rapture & Wright. These designs will be used in the exhibition as bold, unifying motifs across the exhibition gallery. The fabric will be used as covering material for the public seating in the historic house and the wallpaper will be hung in designated public areas within the building. Hopton’s original sketches, collages and mood boards for the designs will be acquired into the archive of the Museum of Bath Architecture.

The gallery space originally served as the servants’ quarters to the main historic house of No.1 Royal Crescent. Comparatively modest in size and scale to the much more lavish accommodation of the historic house next door, Hopton has appropriately given this project the subtitle A Domestic Arrangement, to underline the intimate and creative dialogue between these two artists’ works.

This will be the second exhibition to be held in the newly relaunched gallery.

The Gallery at No.1 Royal Crescent, Bath BA1 2LR / Open Tuesday to Sunday 10.00am to 5.30pm.  Tickets will be available via the website no1royalcrescent.org.uk in due course.