Watercolour
About the work
Beatrix Potter began drawing fungi from around 1885 but knew little of the science behind them. She began exchanging letters with Charles McIntosh (1839–1922), a postman from Inver in Perthshire, who was also an expert on ferns, mosses and fungi. Potter knew him from her holidays in Perthshire as a young girl. When staying in Dunkeld in 1892 (aged 26), she arranged a proper meeting with him to show him her drawings. Although naturally shy, he became lively on the subject of fungi, talking with ‘poetical feeling about their exquisite colours.’ They began exchanging letters. McIntosh sent her samples of mushrooms he had found and, in exchange, she sent him copies of her drawings of them. At first she referred to the specimens by appearance (‘spluttered candle’) or smell (‘exactly like a dead sheep’) but soon developed knowledge of the subject.
Read on
McIntosh advised her to show present her drawings more scientifically instead of drawing them as she found them in the gound. As her knowledge grew, Beatrix exchanged theories with McIntosh on mushroom reproduction. By around the time of this drawing, Beatrix had become interested in on particular branch of mushroom, Agarics, and began experimenting in their germination to write an essay on the subject.
Victoria and Albert Museum
Particulars
- Accession number
- BP.244
Meanwhile, in the life of Beatrix Potter
The whole life1881–1897
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.
1895–1897
A theory of spore germination, and Kew Gardens
In 1895, curious about how fungi reproduce, Beatrix began microscopic drawings of agaric spores and developed a theory of their germination. Through her uncle, the chemist Sir Henry Roscoe, she consulted botanists at Kew and convinced George Massee of her ability to germinate spores, but William Thiselton-Dyer, the director of Kew, rebuffed her because of her sex and amateur status.
1897
A paper for the Linnean Society
In 1897 Beatrix submitted a paper, “On the Germination of the Spores of the Agaricineae”, to the Linnean Society, but as a woman she could neither attend the meeting nor read it herself — George Massee introduced it. She later withdrew it on realising that some of her samples were contaminated, yet she continued her microscopic studies for several more years.
