EXHIBITION On
now until Sunday, 8 January 2023
Beatrix Potter: Drawn to Nature
Celebrating the life and work of one of the best
loved children's authors of the 20th century
On now
until Sunday, 8 January 2023
The Porter
Gallery
This family friendly exhibition takes visitors on
a journey to discover Potter's life as a scientist and conservationist and
explores the places and animals that inspired her most beloved characters. In
collaboration with the National Trust.
Glass reviews the V&A’s Beatrix Potter: Drawn to
Nature
Charlie Newman
March 2, 2022 Culture,
Exhibitions, Feature
https://www.theglassmagazine.com/glass-reviews-the-vas-beatrix-potter-drawn-to-nature/
Children’s
author Beatrix Potter has come full circle. Potter grew up on Bolton Gardens, a
short walk from the South Kensington Museum, today the Victoria and Albert
museum, where we can now find Potter’s studies and stories in Beatrix Potter:
Drawn to Nature.
Curators
Annemarie Bilclough at the V&A and Helen Antrobus at the National Trust
have created a family friendly space where adults and children alike can wonder
at the author and illustrators world with the same set of eyes.
Beatrix
Potter Drawn to Nature, installation image (c) Victoria and Albert Museum,
London (2)Beatrix Potter Drawn to Nature. Victoria and Albert Museum, London
The
exhibition is a much needed reminder that nature can be found and enjoyed
wherever you are. While Potter preferred the countryside, a lot can still be
said for the first 47 years of her life in Kensington.
London was
where she could visit the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artist, John Everett
Millais at his nearby studio in Cromwell Place, where she could take art exams or
frequently visit the National History museum next door.
At the
London Zoo Potter wiled away afternoons sketching animal movements, and spent
her mornings strolling along the excavated Thames, fascinated by the
archaeologists Roman discoveries. Upon seeing Angela Kauffman’s Design at the
Royal Academy Potter exclaimed “I never thought there could be such pictures!”
inspired by “what a woman has done.”
It’s safe
to say Potter was an inspiration herself. After complaining about always being
short of money, her brother Bertrand suggested she sell her self made Christmas
cards which always used to amuse the family – unsurprisingly they quickly sold
out, “It is pleasant to feel I could earn my own living.”
Her wealth
grew further when she signed a publishing deal with Frederick Warne & Co.
in 1902, publishing two titles a year for a decade. The first of her 23 tales
began with The Tale of Peter Rabbit, a character based on the family’s pet
rabbit Peter Piper who was bought for an “exorbitant” four shillings and six
pence, the equivalent of £25, on the Uxbridge road in 1892.
Potter
referred to Peter Piper as her “quiet friend” and “affectionate companion.”
Indeed she
sought friendship in many of her pets. In the exhibition we find a particularly
memorable photograph of Beatrix with her pet rabbit Benjamin Bouncer at Bedwell
Lodge, Hertfordshire in September 1891.
The rabbit
sits in profile with a collar and lead on, whilst Potter appears to be glancing
down chatting away to Bouncer, like a mother to her young child.
We are
informed that Bouncer is a Belgian hare ‘partial to hot buttered toast and
would come running at the sound of the tea bell.’ It’s these witticisms and
humane flourishes paired with Potter’s sharp, articulate drawings that lift her
characters out of the page and come bouncing, scurrying or leaping to life
before us.
Over a
century later it doesn’t seem too far a stretch of the imagination to envisage
a mouse hastily reading a newspaper through oval spectacles, sat atop a bobbin,
or a curled up hedgehog donning stone blue boots.
Throughout
the exhibition it’s hard to believe that you are in fact looking at the works
of a self taught artist. Even from the tender age of nine she was drawing like
for like imagery of hippopotamus’s swimming and ambling tortoises.
Potter put
her artistic talents down to her “irresistible desire to copy”, but Millais’s
explanation seems more applicable when he explained to her that “plenty of
people can draw, but you…have observation.”
Her
observation prospered under her obsessive gathering of insects, animals, ferns
and rocks, to perform taxidermy and collect animal anatomy with her brother.
Potter was particularly fond of mycology, the study of fungi.
Aged 39
Potter took the leap from only holidaying out of London to permanently moving
out when she bought Hill Top Farm in the Lake District. Once she was fully
submerged in nature, her writing began to take a back seat, whilst conservation
and farming took a front seat.
As a member
of the Community Association, she helped employ district nurses and ensured
traditional farming practices could survive, whilst also encouraging Girl
Guides to visit, opening up the countryside for all.
Beatrix
Potter Drawn to Nature. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.Beatrix Potter Drawn
to Nature. Victoria and Albert Museum, London.
Her
dedication to nature was unwavering and continues to thrive. Potter donated
over 4000 acres and 14 working farms upon her death in 1943 to the National
Trust, an organisation she described as “a noble thing, and…immortal”. It is in
the final room of the exhibit where you gain perspective and begin to
understand the importance of Potter’s work as an entrepreneur, farmer,
conservationist and natural scientist on top of her more famous roles.
Whether
it’s the Tale of Miss Moppet, Mrs Tiggy-Winkle, Jemima Puddle-Duck, Timmy
Tiptoes or Squirrel Nutkin that transported you as a child, you can try them on
for size at Drawn to Nature or peer through a microscope over the fantastical
detail of a flys leg, mushroom, sheep’s wool or a dragonfly’s wing.
That’s if
you can fight the kids of all ages off first.
by Charlie Newman
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