Watercolour

in youth

The Royal Academy and John Everett Millais

In her teens Beatrix was a regular visitor to London’s art galleries, especially enjoying the Royal Academy’s summer and winter exhibitions; her journal shows the growth of her taste and critical eye. She was also influenced by her father’s friend, the painter Sir John Everett Millais, who recognised her gift of observation.

1881–1897

A journal in a cipher of her own

From 1881 Beatrix kept a journal in a simple substitution cipher of her own devising — in tiny handwriting, serving as both sketchbook and literary experiment, in which she described society, her impressions of art and the life around her. The entries stop in 1897, when her energies were absorbed in scientific study and in efforts to publish her drawings.

1890–1894

First commissions: cards, rabbits and frogs

In the 1890s Beatrix printed Christmas and other greeting cards of her own design — her first commercially successful works. In 1890 the firm of Hildesheimer and Faulkner bought several drawings of her rabbit Benjamin Bunny to illustrate Frederic Weatherly’s verses “A Happy Pair”, in 1893 several more for “Our Dear Relations”, and in 1894 the publisher Ernest Nister took a series of frog illustrations and verses for the annual “Changing Pictures”.