Rupert Potter (1832-1914), father of the children's writer and illustrator Beatrix Potter (1866-1943), took up photography in the 1860s when it was still a relatively new art form. An enthusiastic and skilled amateur, he was elected to the Photographic Society of London in 1869 and later contributed to photographic exhibitions. Rupert assisted the artist Sir John Everett Millais (1829-1896), a close friend, by photographing backgrounds for paintings and sitters for portraits. His favourite subject, however, was Beatrix herself and his prolific legacy of several hundred photographs forms a broad pictorial account of her life from infancy to marriage.

The Potters lived in South Kensington, a leafy, almost rural suburb which was becoming an increasingly important cultural centre. Their house at 2 Bolton Gardens was not far from the V&A (then called the South Kensington Museum) and the new Natural History Museum, which opened its doors in 1881. In 1873, the year that work began on the new Natural History Museum, Rupert Potter took this photograph of the construction site. After the museum opened, Beatrix Potter became a regular visitor.