Merry Christmas, Peter Rabbit!

In the early 1890s, Beatrix Potter was chafing at her lack of independence and decided to try earning some money by selling drawings of anthropomorphized animals to publishers Ernest Nister or Hildesheimer & Faulkner, German-based firms known for high-quality color printing.  She realized 7 shillings and 6 pence in 1892 from the sale of this highly finished drawing of Peter Rabbit opening the front door and discovering a large wicker basket filled with carrots and turnips (or perhaps rutabagas) on the snowy step.  Signed “H. B. P.” in tiny initials in the lower right, it first appeared in a medley of pictures on the cover drawings on Nister’s Changing Pictures [1893] and as the frontispiece to Nister’s Isn’t It Funny [1894], both of which are in the collection.  There is a preparatory sketch of this scene in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

A private family owned this enchanting watercolor over a century until this fall, when it was purchased  by the Cotsen Children’s Library.  2024 will go down as the year the Library was lucky enough to acquire three Beatrix Potter drawings–a beautiful drawing of a mushroom, another with studies of Peter Rabbit’s head, and this one–to the collection.

And here is one of Potter’s Christmas card designs featuring mice…

May there be a surprise on your porch this Christmas morning!