Watercolour

As a young woman Beatrix Potter studied natural history with some seriousness, exploring the collections of the Natural History Museum, including the insect cases and fungi specimens. She had a collector’s cabinet full of specimens, from shells to dead butterflies and moths, and used a magnifying glass and a microscope to examine them more closely. She made numerous carefully observed studies of animals and plants from life.

Potter often made sketches of her pets and other animals she came across. The numerous sketches of mice and cats covering both sides of this sheet exemplify Potter’s wish to study the animals concerned from every possible angle. A rough sketch of a garden path on the verso was thought by the Potter scholar Leslie Linder to show Camfield Place, the home of Potter’s paternal grandparents. It is difficult to identify the garden concerned from a rough sketch as Potter drew many gardens, but Gwaynynog, the home of Potter’s aunt and uncle, appears to be another possibility: Potter described the garden at Gwaynynog as the ‘prettiest kind’ and it formed the setting for The Tale of the Flopsy Bunnies (Frederick Warne, 1909).