Drawing of horse and cart in ink over pencil and also a rough sketch of a man running towrds the viewer in pencil, by Beatrix Potter, Great Britain, probably 1910, Linder Bequest catalogue no. LB.1855.

Drawing to the left in ink over pencil of a horse and cart facing to the right. To the bottom right is a pencil sketch comprising multiple outlines of a man running towards the viewer.

Linder Bequest [plus object number; written on labels on the same line as the object number]

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.

Funded partly by the financial success of the first of her little books, Potter began to buy a number of working farms within the Lake District. With the prospect of war looming she was strongly against the Liberal government's proposal that farm horses may be subject to conscription if conflict arose. Potter relied on one horse for ploughing her fields at her personal property of Hill Top farm. Edmund Evans Ltd. printed over 1000 of the leaflets 'A shortage of horses' for Potter and she sent them out to contacts within the farming industry shortly after the government's re-election. This sketch of a hay cart, or the image which bears a resemblance to an illustration from The Tale of Peter Rabbit (1902) where Mr McGregor is chasing Peter with a rake, are not found in the final leaflet . At one stage perhaps she considered using a tie-in to her famous tale to communicate the campaign’s message.

The 1910 election and its immediate aftermath saw Beatrix’s first and final application of her illustrative talents within the realm of national politics. It was not however the last of her ventures into the local politics of the Lake District.

BP.353(d)