Photograph of Bertram, Beatrix and Rupert Potter, with a decorative mount by Beatrix Potter, 1898.
“I cannot rest, I must draw, however poor the result, and when I have a bad time come over me it is a stronger desire than ever.” - Beatrix Potter
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943)
Beatrix Potter was a brilliant botanist and naturalist who cleverly avoided the conventions and constrictions of her sex by turning her perfectly accurate illustrations of flora and fauna into whimsical children’s tales. A drawing of a rabbit, made after intense studies of her own pet rabbits, with the addition of a little blue jacket with brass buttons. And so, Peter Rabbit was born.
L-R: Studies of a rabbit's head (Benjamin Bouncer), August 1890; Unfinished endpaper design for the little books, version of design No. 1, by Beatrix Potter, 1902, pencil, pen and ink. Museum no. Linder Bequest BP. 466. © Victoria and Albert Museum, London, courtesy Frederick Warne & Co Ltd.
The Flopsy Bunnies experiencing the sleep-inducing effect of eating lettuces. Beatrix Potter (b.1866), 'The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies', Watercolour, 1909 – The British Museum.
As a child Beatrix spent long hours at The Natural History Museum, a short walk from her London home, studying and sketching the insect collection there. She was also inspired by John E Sowerby’s ‘British Wild Flowers’, a gift from her grandmother. With her brother Bertram, Beatrix pressed and preserved hundreds of flowers, the “careful botanical studies of my youth”, which she then used as visual references for her precise pencil and watercolour sketches.
Pressing, drawing and painting flowers was considered a perfectly ladylike pastime for young women, but Beatrix always combined her whimsical imagination with the empirical detachment of a scientist. Meticulous accuracy was her watchword, and the precision of her drawings of flora and fauna probably goes a long way to explain how her children’s books have continued to be so successful for more than 100 years.
Hygrocybe Coccinea, Beatrix Potter, 1897.
Studies of bees and other insects, by Beatrix Potter, about 1895, watercolour over pencil. Museum no. LC 19/B/5, given by the Linder Collection. © Victoria & Albert Museum, London, courtesy Frederick Warne & Co Ltd.
Pink rosebud with leaves, watercolour, 25 September 1896, Beatrix Potter
An example of sexism at work in the 19th Century was perpetrated against Beatrix Potter when she was in her early 20’s. A frequent visitor to Kew Gardens, Beatrix developed a passion for Mycology, the study of the complicated story of mushrooms. As well as drawing them she began to conduct her own experiments on their germination.
Through her uncle, a renowned chemist, Potter was introduced Kew’s director and other senior botanists. She went to great lengths to get an introduction to the foremost mycologist of that time, Charles McIntosh. Under his guidance, Beatrix studied the little known subject of spore reproduction in fungi, lichens and algae, writing a beautifully illustrated paper on her findings called: ‘On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae’. This scholarly work was presented to the particularly misogynistic William Turner Thistleton Dyer, then director of Kew and president of the Linnean Society. who described the work as “mare’s nests”.
Beatrix with her brother Bertram and the family dog photographed by her father in 1898
After Potter’s ideas were rejected out of hand by the Society, who didn’t even bother to look at the miraculous drawings she had made, her papers were then subsequently lost and so never published. Beatrix knew her work was accurate but accepted the slight with equanimity. Because she was a woman, she knew she was unlikely to be taken seriously.
A century later The Linnaean Society issued an apology to Beatrix Potter and accepted that her work on mycology was, and still continues to be, of great importance. But Beatrix had beaten the system. Her children’s stories went on to be so successful that she was able to gain her freedom. She left home, married her publisher and, with the proceeds of the children’s books she wrote, bought her own farm in the Lake District.
Potter became a passionate sheep farmer and started buying the hill farms around her home as they came up for sale. Eventually she was custodian of 4,000 acres in the Lake District which she left to the National Trust when she died. This land now forms a large part of the National Park and is home to two thirds of the world's population of Herdwick sheep and remains one of the most beautiful and unspoilt areas in Great Britain.
Further stories of our Botanical Heroines can be found in our book The Modern Flower Press. Published by William Collins, 2022.
Further reading:
Beatrix Potter: The Picture Letters – The Morgan Library & Museum; A Beatrix Potter Botanical: Flora and Fungi from the Creator of Peter Rabbit – A new book by Marta McDowell; Introducing Beatrix Potter – V&A Museum articles.