Beatrix Potter1866–1943Peter by the door in the wall
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Peter by the door in the wall” now? Collection: Victoria and Albert Museum, London. Not on view at present. Checked September 25, 2026.
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
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.
In spring 1927 Beatrix Potter joined a National Trust campaign to save Cockshott Point on Lake Windermere from development. Her scheme allowed readers of the American Magazine the Horn Book to contribute to ‘The Windermere Fund’, offering fifty original signed drawings from The Tale of Peter Rabbit for sale at a guinea a piece. This drawing of August 1927 reproduces the illustration of Peter by the door in the wall from the well-loved book, when: ‘He found a door in a wall; but it was locked, and there was no room for a fat little rabbit to squeeze underneath.’
Read on
Potter’s letter of appeal was published in the August 1927 issue of the Horn Book and was successful. In a letter to her American friend, Marian Frazer Harris Perry, she said: ‘I’m sure I am doing good in trying to save anything I can of our Lake country from being vulgarized; for, as true education advances, the beauty of unspoilt nature will be appreciated; and it would be a pity if the appreciation came too late’.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Details
- Accession number
- BP.546
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
In the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole life1913–1943
Thirty years of marriage: nieces and Girl Guides
Beatrix and William Heelis enjoyed a happy marriage of thirty years and carried on their farming and preservation work through the hard days of the Second World War. They had no children, but Beatrix played an important part in William’s large family, helping to educate several nieces, comforting and aiding his brothers and sisters, and letting Girl Guide troops camp on her land in the summer.
late 1920s
Prize-winning Herdwicks: Potter as a show judge
By the late 1920s Beatrix and her Hill Top farm manager Tom Storey had made a name for their prize-winning Herdwick flock, which took many prizes at local agricultural shows, where Potter herself was often asked to judge.
1929–1932
Late books: “The Fairy Caravan” and “Sister Anne”
In 1929 came the semi-autobiographical “The Fairy Caravan”, a tale set in her beloved Troutbeck fells, published only in the US in her lifetime (in Britain not until 1952). “The Tale of Little Pig Robinson”, written much earlier, was published in 1930, and in 1932 “Sister Anne”, her version of the Bluebeard story for American readers, illustrated by Katharine Sturges.
