Wild rabbit and young

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.

Rupert Potter was a major influence on his daughter's artistic development from an early age. A keen practitioner and collector of art, Rupert nurtured Beatrix's extraordinary artistic talent and power of observation. He encouraged her to train her eye and hand by copying outlines in the popular drawing manuals of Vere Foster. These drawing books, published by Blackie & Son, comprise a booklet of outlines with space alongside for copying.

The Victoria and Albert Museum holds several of Beatrix's juvenile drawings of flowers, buildings and animals copied from Vere Foster's Drawing Books, including this drawing of a wild rabbit and her young, reproduced as a transfer print on paper. Beatrix's transfer prints were probably made by putting the original ink drawing, while still wet, face down on a gelatine film so that some of the ink was transferred to the gelatine. The original was then removed and the gelatine used as a printing surface.

It is probable that Rupert instructed Beatrix in this technique for he also copied several outlines of birds from Vere Foster's Drawing Books and reproduced them as transfer prints on linen and on ceramic plates for the nursery of 2 Bolton Gardens. Some of these plates are displayed in the hall of Beatrix's former home at Hill Top in the Lake District, where there are also examples of Beatrix's own attempts at printing ceramic tiles.