Beatrix Potter1866–1943Watercolour
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Victoria and Albert Museum
London, United Kingdom
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
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- Source
- The museum's own collection data
About the work
Beatrix Potter 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.
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Beatrix Potter made use of both sides of this undated sheet for watercolour studies. She enjoyed sketching the British landscape in all seasons and these studies capture the changes to the landscape brought by the seasons and the weather, the woodland study using a warm autumnal colour palette while the snow scene makes use of cool blues and purples. The snowy hills of the study on the verso suggest the landscape around Esthwaite Water in the Lake District; Potter had purchased a farm, Hill Top, there in 1905. She made a number of studies of her hilly surroundings under snow in the winters of 1909, 1910 and 1913, so this study may date from one of those years. Potter thought the Lakeland fells 'even more impressive in mist and snow'.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- BP.974
In the catalog
Sources
- Victoria and Albert Museum: the museum's own open data · fetched 11 days ago
- Image: Victoria and Albert Museum — © Victoria and Albert Museum, London
Meanwhile, in the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole life1903–1922
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.
1905–1909
Learning to farm: a tenant, sheep and Castle Farm
The tenant farmer John Cannon and his family stayed on to run the farm while Beatrix made improvements and learned the techniques of fell farming and livestock; the following year she added sheep. To protect her boundaries she turned to the Hawkshead solicitors W. H. Heelis & Son and, with William Heelis acting for her, bought adjoining pasture — in 1909 the 20 acres of Castle Farm across the road from Hill Top.
1905–1913 · Education
governance
