Good afternoon everyone,

How are you? I had a lovely weekend in Richmond and surrounds recently, here are two of the cool women I learned about there. Tinyletter isn't letting me do images today so you will need to click to see the floating babies and the beautiful flowers. It's worth it though.

What about Joan Carlile, one of Britain's first female artists - in fact quite a lot of firsts, as this article makes clear:

Joan Carlile’s name is often referenced with some variation of “first”—she is generally called one of the first British professional female portraitists, one of the first British female artists to work in oil and even one of the first professional female painters in England. The key word here is “professional”—what made Carlile stand out was not just her distinctive style and her gender, but the fact that she actually earned money from her craft. She even lived and likely maintained a studio in Covent Garden, a hub for artists in the 1600s.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/she-was-one-of-britains-first-female-professional-portrait-artists-why-isnt-she-better-known-joan-carlile-180980157/

Secondly, here's Mary Delany, who invented a new kind of collage in the 1700s to more accurately portray flowers:

By cutting minute pieces of paper and sticking them to a solid black background, Delany could build up each part of a specimen, sometimes using around 200 paper petals per flower. She used smaller pieces layered over larger ones to create shading and depth, and sometimes enhanced parts with watercolours. The glue used to stick the pieces together was likely egg white or flour and water.

https://www.britishmuseum.org/blog/late-bloomer-exquisite-craft-mary-delany

Have a great weekend! Kew Gardens is really nice, if you are in London.

Alex.