Between naturalism and fantasy: the art of Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter, Dinner in Mouseland, 1890-1895 / Beatrix Potter Gallery

The wildly imaginative works of Beatrix Potter take entertained readers for decades. But is there more to her work than kittens in pinafores and toads in dinner jackets? Our extensive drove of her illustrations, unpublished sketches and personal letters reveal a lifelong affinity for the natural earth as well every bit for anthropomorphic fantasy.

Lessons from nature

Beatrix Potter was fascinated past the natural globe from an early on age. With her younger brother Bertram, she kept a menagerie of animals in the plant nursery - at various times they kept rabbits, mice, lizards, a bat, a frog and a snake. The children studied their pets' behaviour, and Beatrix fabricated many detailed drawings of them in a homemade sketchbook.

Beatrix Potter'due south study of her pet rabbit, 1898. This 'real' rabbit, called Peter Piper, was the namesake of the beloved fictional character / Beatrix Potter Gallery NT 242725

Pencil study of Beatrix Potter's pet rabbit

Beatrix Potter's study of her pet rabbit, 1898. This 'existent' rabbit, called Peter Piper, was the namesake of the dear fictional grapheme / Beatrix Potter Gallery NT 242725

While Bertram was sent to boarding school, Beatrix was kept at home where she was educated by a serial of governesses. She was instructed in cartoon and painting and, in conjunction with trips to the Museum of Natural History, was encouraged to written report and sketch animals. Separated from her brother and isolated from other children her age, she found solace and inspiration in the natural world.

At the age of 15 Beatrix received her Fine art Student'due south Document from the Scientific discipline and Art Department of the Committee of Council on Educational activity. Although her early drawings show a certain stiffness of composition, she earned praise from the pre-Raphaelite painter Sir John Everett Millais for her skills in drawing and observation.

Happily, Beatrix and Bertram were reunited for iii months during the summer holidays. Each year, the Potter family (including Beatrix'southward pets) would pack up and motion to the country, typically in Scotland or the English Lake District. These holidays provided Beatrix with an inexhaustible supply of natural objects to study and draw.

Beatrix became particularly interested in mushrooms and toadstools, and from the late 1880s to the turn of the century she produced hundreds of finely detailed and botanically correct drawings of fungi.

Beatrix Potter, Wing Agaric (Amanita muscaria), 1890. She later on remarked that the botanical studies she made in her youth underpinned her more fanciful drawings. / NT 242757

Beatrix Potter, Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria), 1890 / Beatrix Potter Gallery

Beatrix Potter, Fly Agaric (Amanita muscaria), 1890. She subsequently remarked that the botanical studies she fabricated in her youth underpinned her more than fanciful drawings. / NT 242757

Her watercolour report of Wing Agaric, perhaps the most iconic of British fungi, demonstrates her talent for botanical illustration. The study shows the distinctive red cap with white spots and ridged underside. But this is not a specimen drawn in isolation. Beatrix has convincingly depicted the fungus in a naturalistic setting amongst ferns, ivy, beech leaves, mosses and lichen.

This naturalism did non come at the expense of imagination. For Beatrix, the countryside was also magical. She later wrote, 'the whole countryside belonged to the fairies'. Equally she would afterwards bear witness in her art, realism and fantasy could happily coexist.

This balance of the spirit-world and scientific knowledge, of imagination and reality is evident throughout her illustrations and story books, where an exacting observation of the natural world provides the foundation for anthropomorphic fantasy. Her meticulous drawings of fungi, ferns and mosses lend themselves to an exploration of a tiny world that mirrors human life. In Dinner in Mouseland for instance, a flawlessly sketched mouse - drawn with the centre of an investigative scientist - joins his family for dinner wearing pinnacle hat and tails in a near convivial domestic scene.

Dinner in Mouseland, 1890-1895. Beatrix made this drawing in pencil, ink and watercolour using the grisaille technique. / NT 242737

Beatrix Potter, Dinner in Mouseland, 1890-1895 / Beatrix Potter Gallery

Dinner in Mouseland, 1890-1895. Beatrix made this drawing in pencil, ink and watercolour using the grisaille technique. / NT 242737

From moving-picture show messages to illustrated books

Every bit a young adult, Beatrix developed a friendship with Annie Moore (née Carter), her sometime governess. Beatrix would visit Annie's children, often accompanied past her pet mice or rabbit; when she went on holiday, she would send them letters with agreeable anecdotes. These letters were often illustrated with pen and ink sketches, recounting stories when there was no news to tell. Some of Beatrix's earliest books originate in the stories first told and pictured in letters to the Moore children.

Beatrix Potter'due south copy of her 1893 alphabetic character to Noel Moore: 'I don't know what to write about and then I shall tell you a story of 4 footling rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter' / NT 242253

Copy made by Beatrix of the original Peter Rabbit story letter that she wrote to Noel Moore from Eastwood, Dunkeld, 4 September 1893

Beatrix Potter's copy of her 1893 letter of the alphabet to Noel Moore: 'I don't know what to write about so I shall tell you lot a story of iv little rabbits, whose names were Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail and Peter' / NT 242253


When the eldest of the Moore children, Noel, cruel ill with scarlet fever in 1893, Beatrix sent him a letter describing the adventures of a naughty rabbit named Peter. Beatrix later had the thought of turning this story into a book. When the story, with its black and white illustrations, was rejected by six publishers, she decided to print it privately. An edition of 250 copies was issued in December 1901, and proved so successful that a further 200 copies were issued in February 1902.

Frederick Warne & Company ultimately reconsidered, and on the condition that Beatrix provide colour illustrations, a commercial edition of The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published in Oct 1902. It was an immediate success, selling 50,000 copies in just over a yr. Since that time, information technology has never been out of print.

While Beatrix honed her business organization acumen (she played a critical role in the production and promotion of her books), she remained a steadfast observer of the physical world, amassing many studies and sketches of her natural surroundings. These studies and sketches - many made in the Lake District - formed the pictorial basis of her imaginative tales.

Lakeland

Beatrix offset visited the Lake District at the age of 16 when her father rented Wray Castle on the shore of Lake Windermere for the family's long summer holiday. This visit introduced Beatrix to the lakeland scenery that would get the setting and inspiration for and so much of her best-loved work.

The family returned to the Lake Commune for their holidays in subsequent years, staying in various large country houses around Keswick, Windermere and Sawrey. Information technology was while staying at Lingholm on the shore of Derwentwater in 1901 that Beatrix was inspired with the idea for her first Lake District book, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin.

View of Derwentwater from the Squirrel Nutkin sketchbook. The ink, pencil and watercolour studies in this 1901 sketchbook provided background scenery for the 1903 publication. / NT 242740

Sketchbook drawing in watercolour by Beatrix Potter

View of Derwentwater from the Squirrel Nutkin sketchbook. The ink, pencil and watercolour studies in this 1901 sketchbook provided background scenery for the 1903 publication. / NT 242740


The character of Squirrel Nutkin start appeared in a picture letter to Norah Moore in September 1901. The letter of the alphabet is illustrated by twelve pen and ink sketches, including one which shows a group of squirrels on little rafts sailing beyond a lake. That aforementioned year Beatrix filled an unabridged sketchbook with studies of the wooded shores of Derwentwater. These became the backgrounds for the illustrations in the book which was published in Baronial 1903.

Watercolour illustration for The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, 1903. This illustration appears on page 15 of the published book. / NT 243217

Watercolour illustration for The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin

Watercolour illustration for The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, 1903. This illustration appears on page 15 of the published volume. / NT 243217


The expanse around Derwentwater became the setting for boosted books and her natural history studies would continue to brand appearances in her illustrations. In The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin, yous can place specimen illustrations of flowers, fungi, oak apples and robin's pincushions.

As near perfect a petty identify...


In 1905, with royalties from her books, Beatrix was able to buy Loma Top, a pocket-sized subcontract in the village of Near Sawrey in the heart of the Lake Commune. After a holiday spent there in earlier years, Beatrix once described Near Sawrey 'as nearly perfect a little place as I ever lived in'. It was the area effectually Sawrey and nearby Hawkshead that would become home to so many of Beatrix'due south best-loved characters and provide the setting for a full of ix of the lilliputian books.

Front view of Hill Pinnacle from the garden path. Photo by Rupert Potter, Beatrix's begetter. / NT 242368.3

Photograph of Hill Top front door and porch

Front view of Hill Top from the garden path. Photograph by Rupert Potter, Beatrix's father. / NT 242368.iii

At Hill Pinnacle, Beatrix loved the view upward the garden path to the porch and front door. This view is conspicuously identifiable in The Tale of Tom Kitten where the illustrations requite the reader glimpses of the cottage garden. Indeed, Beatrix's work on Tom Kitten coincides with periods of busy preparations in the garden at Hill Superlative. It seems only natural that this very existent patch of land with which she was so engrossed would brand its style into the fictional world of her latest animal grapheme.

Beatrix Potter's illustration for the Tale of Tom Kitten featuring a view of Hill Top from the garden.

Watercolour, pen and ink / Beatrix Potter

Beatrix Potter'south illustration for the Tale of Tom Kitten featuring a view of Hill Top from the garden.

Beatrix Potter'south ascertainment of the world around her helped ensure her stories would be then captivating. Indeed, the concrete earth is as much a office of the textile of the books every bit the cherished bipedal animals who inhabit information technology.