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Beatrix Potter

Mr Brown paid no attention to Squirrel Nutkin

Image Size: 17 x 22.5cm
Mounted Size: 35 x 41cm
Overall Size: 35 x 41cm
   
Edition Size: 495
£79.00
In stock
Only %1 left
SKU
BP9032
Image Size: 17 x 22.5cm
Mounted Size: 35 x 41cm
Overall Size: 35 x 41cm
   
Edition Size: 495

Beatrix Potter

About the Artwork

THE TALE OF SQUIRREL NUTKIN published 1903

In 1901, Beatrix Potter was spending the summer with her family in Lingholm, a house on the shores of Derwentwater in the Lake District. She wrote a letter all about squirrels she saw there to eight-year-old Norah Moore, daughter of her former governess: “An old lady who lives on the island says she thinks they come over the lake when her nuts are ripe; but I wonder how they can get across the water? Perhaps they have little rafts!” The letter then goes on to relate the story of Squirrel Nutkin, the cheeky squirrel who is finally punished by Old Brown, an owl whom Beatrix has substituted for the old lady of the letter. The finished book was dedicated to Norah. It contains many views of the beautiful lake, Derwentwater, largely unchanged today.

Beatrix Potter

About the Artist

Beatrix Potter was born in London in 1866 and grew up living the conventionally sheltered life of a Victorian girl in a well-to-do household. She was educated at home by a governess with her brother Bertram.  Her constant companions were the pet animal she kept which she enjoyed studying and sketching.  On summer holidays she delighted in exploring the countryside and learning about plants and animals from her own observations. Beatrix Potter devoted most of her energy to the study of natural history – archaeology, geology, entomology and, especially, mycology. Fungi appealed to Potter’s imagination, both for their evanescent habits and for their coloration. Encouraged by Charles McIntosh, a revered Scottish naturalist, to make her fungi drawings more technically accurate, Potter not only produced beautiful watercolours, but also became an adept scientific illustrator. By 1896 Beatrix Potter had developed her own theory of how fungi spores reproduced and wrote a paper, ‘On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae‘. This was presented to a meeting of the Linnean Society on 1 April 1897 by one of the mycologists from the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, since women could not attend Society meetings. Her paper has since been lost. Beatrix Potter’s career as a children’s illustrator and storyteller began when The Tale of Peter Rabbit was published by Frederick Warne and Co. in 1902.  The public loved it as soon as it appeared and Beatrix went on to produce on average two books a year until 1910.