Beatrix Potter1866–1943Two rabbits smoking pipes
May one see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Two rabbits smoking pipes” 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.
This watercolour was made for Noël Moore, the little boy to whom Potter first wrote the story of Peter Rabbit. Noël has inscribed the verso: 'After Beatrix Potter had written to me the first Peter Rabbit letter in Sept 1893, she made me some cardboard toys to amuse me during illness. Later on I asked her if she would make me a drawing for my albums of friends' paintings and drawings. This drawing of a somewhat older Peter is the result. It was drawn for me in 1902. Noël C Moore.'
Read on
A version of this illustration appears as the frontispiece in Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes. In the published illustration the second rabbit holds a newspaper instead of a pipe.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- BP.522
What it shows
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Meanwhile, in the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole life1900–1901
A dummy book of the rabbit tale, printed at her own expense
In 1900 Beatrix revised her tale of the four little rabbits and made a dummy book of it — it has been suggested, in imitation of Helen Bannerman’s 1899 bestseller; no one would buy it. So in December 1901 she had it printed at her own expense for family and friends — in black and white, with a coloured frontispiece.
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.
1903
A patented Peter Rabbit toy: the birth of character merchandising
In 1903 Beatrix made and patented a Peter Rabbit doll — he became the first fictional character made into a patented soft toy, and so the oldest licensed character. Painting books, board games, wallpaper, figurines, baby blankets and china tea-sets followed under licence from her publisher Warne, earning her an independent income, and Harrods catalogues list Peter merchandise from at least 1910.
1903–1922
Two or three books a year with the editor Norman Warne
“The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin” and “The Tailor of Gloucester” followed “Peter Rabbit” in 1903 — both also began as picture letters to the Moore children. Working with the editor Norman Warne, Beatrix published two or three little books a year — 23 in all in that format, the last, in 1922, being “Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes”; the royalties gave her a degree of independence, though she still lived with her parents.
