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.

A published author with an astute business sense, Potter began designing merchandise to accompany The Tale of Peter Rabbit within a year of its publication. In December 1903 she began making a Peter Rabbit doll for the niece of her publisher, Norman Warne: 'the expression is going to be lovely; especially the whiskers - (pulled out of a brush!)'. She patented the doll on 28 December 1903 and went on to design a Peter Rabbit board game, painting books, handkerchiefs, stationery, wallpaper, a nursery frieze, figurines, slippers, calendars, tea-sets, jigsaw puzzles, and so on. Never short of ideas, Potter pursued an interest in merchandise long after she had ceased to write and illustrate children's books. She maintained a careful control over all product designs, insisting in particular that any reproduction of her characters should be faithful to her original drawings and to the true nature and likeness of animals.

Beatrix based her first painting book, Peter Rabbit's Painting Book, on one that she had made some years earlier as a present for Louie Warne, the daughter of Harold Warne. In the published book, Peter Rabbit is joined by other characters, including Jemima Puddle-duck, Mrs. Tiggy-winkle, Squirrel Nutkin and Tom Kitten. Beatrix warns children, ‘Don’t put the Brush in your mouth. If you do, you will be ill, like Peter’.

Recognising that ‘several children want to paint at once’ and ‘pin up their productions’, Beatrix also proposed issuing unbound pages from the painting book in an envelope at a cheaper price - ‘for the little artist to colour as separate pictures’. Warne published the individual pages together with the painting book in October 1911. Following the success of Peter Rabbit's Painting Book, Potter also produced Tom Kitten's Painting Book in 1917 and Jemima Puddle-duck's Painting Book in 1925.

This drawing of Samuel Whiskers and Anna Maria rolling Tom Kitten in pastry was produced for a painting book but never published. A watercolour version of the illustration appears in The Tale of Samuel Whiskers on page 58 of the 2002 edition.