Beatrix Potter1866–1943A stream running through a forest
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Victoria and Albert Museum
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- 9 days ago
- In this state since
- Sep 25, 2026
- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the work
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is one of the world's best-loved children's authors and illustrators. She wrote the majority of the twenty-three Original Peter Rabbit Books between 1901 and 1913. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Frederick Warne, 1902) is her most famous and best-loved tale.
Beatrix Potter enjoyed sketching the British landscape in all seasons, capturing the different locations in England, Scotland and Wales that she visited with her parents prior to her marriage in 1913. This watercolour drawing was probably made during one of these extended holidays. Many, but by no means all, of her landscape studies were made in the Lake District; she holidayed there regularly from 1885 and in 1905 she cemented her connection to the area by purchasing Hill Top. However, it was not until her marriage to Lakeland solicitor William Heelis in 1913 that she settled there permanently.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- BP.978
What it shows
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 9 days ago
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Meanwhile, in the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole lifeSeptember 1893
A letter to Noel Moore about four rabbits
In September 1893, on holiday at Eastwood near Dunkeld, Beatrix ran out of things to write to Noel, the often-ill eldest son of her former governess Annie Carter Moore, and told him a story about “four little rabbits whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, and Peter”. It became one of the most famous children’s letters ever written and the basis of her future career; it was Annie who later suggested that such letters might make good children’s books.
2 October 1902
“The Tale of Peter Rabbit” is published
Several publishers had turned the manuscript down, Frederick Warne & Co among them, but the firm, eager to enter the booming market for small-format children’s books, reconsidered on the advice of the artist L. Leslie Brooke; it declined Rawnsley’s verse version in favour of Beatrix’s own prose, and she agreed to colour her illustrations, choosing the new Hentschel three-colour process. “The Tale of Peter Rabbit” appeared on 2 October 1902 and was an immediate success.
1905
Engagement to Norman Warne, and his death
In 1905 Beatrix and her publisher Norman Warne became unofficially engaged; her parents objected because Warne was “in trade” and so socially unsuitable. The engagement lasted only a month: Warne died of a blood disease at the age of 37.
1905
Buys Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey
In 1905, with the proceeds of her books and a small legacy from an aunt, Beatrix bought Hill Top Farm in Near Sawrey in the Lake District, six miles west of Lake Windermere. She and Warne may have hoped it would be their holiday home, but after his death she went ahead with the purchase, as she had always wanted to own that farm and live in “that charming village”.
1905–1913 · Education
governance
15 October 1913
Marriage to William Heelis and the move to Near Sawrey
On 15 October 1913, at St Mary Abbots in Kensington, the 47-year-old Beatrix married William Heelis and moved with him straight to Near Sawrey, to Castle Cottage, the renovated farmhouse on Castle Farm. Hill Top remained a working farm but was remodelled to house the tenant family and her private studio and workshop.
