The Toads' Tea Party
Watercolour
ca. 1905 (made)
ca. 1905 (made)
| Artist/Maker |
Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is one of the world's best-loved children's authors and illustrators. She wrote the majority of the twenty-three Original Peter Rabbit Books between 1901 and 1913. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Frederick Warne, 1902) is her most famous and best-loved tale.
This drawing was made to illustrate a rhyme in an intended 1905 book of nursery rhymes in the style of Randolph Caldecott’s picture books. The illustration was for the following rhyme:
If acorn-cups were tea-cups, what should we have to drink?
Why! honey-dew for sugar, in a cuckoo-pint of milk;
With pats of witches’ butter and a tansey cake, I think,
Laid out upon a toad-stool on a cloth of cob-web silk!
Potter did not in the end publish her rhymes until 1917, in Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes.
This drawing was made to illustrate a rhyme in an intended 1905 book of nursery rhymes in the style of Randolph Caldecott’s picture books. The illustration was for the following rhyme:
If acorn-cups were tea-cups, what should we have to drink?
Why! honey-dew for sugar, in a cuckoo-pint of milk;
With pats of witches’ butter and a tansey cake, I think,
Laid out upon a toad-stool on a cloth of cob-web silk!
Potter did not in the end publish her rhymes until 1917, in Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes.
Object details
| Categories | |
| Object type | |
| Title | The Toads' Tea Party (published title) |
| Materials and techniques | pen and ink and watercolour on paper |
| Brief description | Watercolour and pen and ink drawing of a Toads' tea party, showing a group of toads eating cake and drinking out of acorn cups in a woodland setting; drawn for an intended book of nursery rhymes by Beatrix Potter in ca. 1905; Linder Bequest cat. no. LB.710. |
| Physical description | A finished drawing in pen and ink and watercolour showing six toads on toadstool 'stools' grouped around a toadstool table eating cake and drinking from acorn cups in a woodland setting, while a seventh toad looks on. Each toad has a colourful jacket in brown, green, pink or blue. |
| Dimensions |
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| Style | |
| Production type | Unique |
| Gallery label | In this illustration, Potter turned toadstools into stools and a table for a toad’s tea party. A similar image features alongside a verse titled ‘Acorn-cups’ in her 1905 manuscript for Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes. The verse mentions several mildly poisonous ingredients with folk associations to witchcraft, including witches’ butter, a colloquial name for a kind of fungus, and honey-dew, a sap often infected with ergot fungus.(November 2019) |
| Credit line | Linder Bequest [plus object number; written on labels on the same line as the object number] |
| Object history | Drawn by Beatrix Potter, ca. 1905. Acquired by the V&A from Leslie Linder (1904-1973) in 1973 as part of the Linder Bequest, a collection of ca. 2150 watercolours, drawings, literary manuscripts, correspondence, books, photographs, and other memorabilia associated with Beatrix Potter and her family. |
| Subjects depicted | |
| Summary | Beatrix Potter (1866-1943) is one of the world's best-loved children's authors and illustrators. She wrote the majority of the twenty-three Original Peter Rabbit Books between 1901 and 1913. The Tale of Peter Rabbit (Frederick Warne, 1902) is her most famous and best-loved tale. This drawing was made to illustrate a rhyme in an intended 1905 book of nursery rhymes in the style of Randolph Caldecott’s picture books. The illustration was for the following rhyme: If acorn-cups were tea-cups, what should we have to drink? Why! honey-dew for sugar, in a cuckoo-pint of milk; With pats of witches’ butter and a tansey cake, I think, Laid out upon a toad-stool on a cloth of cob-web silk! Potter did not in the end publish her rhymes until 1917, in Appley Dapply’s Nursery Rhymes. |
| Bibliographic reference | Hobbs, Anne Stevenson, and Joyce Irene Whalley, eds. Beatrix Potter: the V & A collection : the Leslie Linder bequest of Beatrix Potter material : watercolours, drawings, manuscripts, books, photographs and memorabilia. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1985.
p.73; no.710
Hobbs, Anne Stevenson, and Joyce Irene Whalley, eds. Beatrix Potter: the V & A collection: the Leslie Linder bequest of Beatrix Potter material: watercolours, drawings, manuscripts, books, photographs and memorabilia. London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 1985. p.73; no.710 |
| Other number | LB.710 - Linder Bequest catalogue no. |
| Collection | |
| Library number | BP.518 |
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| Record created | March 25, 2015 |
| Record URL |
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