Category Archives: Nature

New Acquisitions: Drawings by Beatrix and Bertram Potter of Peter Rabbit, Mushrooms and a Kestrel

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A Family of Artists: Beatrix, Rupert, and Bertram Potter

A Family of Artists: Beatrix, Rupert, and Bertram Potter

Many people pity Beatrix Potter for her restrictive upbringing with limited contact with other children in the family home at 2 Bolton Gardens, London.  For someone with her gifts, there were hidden advantages to her circumstances.  Instead of being sent to school, she was educated by governesses, one of whom, Annie Moore, became a life-long friend.  Beatrix and her younger brother Walter Bertram sound as if they were allowed to do pretty much what they liked in the school room on the top floor, which contained a small menagerie, a lab furnished with space for the dissection of specimens and their examination under the microscope.  There was plenty of time for them to record what they saw in detailed sketches.   In fact, they both drew constantly.

An unfinished portrait of Beatrix by Bertram in the collection of the V&A.

Their parents Rupert and Helen were artistic themselves and greatly attracted to nature; the family’s wealth afforded many opportunities to take extended summer vacations in Scotland and the Lake District.  From their teens onward, Beatrix and Walter used their freedom to explore the countryside and draw in their sketch books.  They surely found inspiration in the classic story “Eyes and No Eyes,” by John Aikin from Evenings at Home (1792-1796).  Many Victorian writers, including John Ruskin, Charles Kingsley, and Mrs. Molesworth, testified that reading it awakened their curiosity and sense of wonder when William described everything he saw on a walk to Broom Heath.  Nothing escaped his attention and everything delighted him, from the shy kingfisher, a cluster of sea shells in a marl pit, the remains of a Roman or Danish camp, the water rat who disappeared into his hole in the river bank.  I can imagine Beatrix and Walter taking as much satisfaction in their adventures as did William.

In 2023 and 2024 the Cotsen Children’s Library was exceptionally fortunate to have acquired two natural history drawings by Beatrix and one by Walter.Attracted by their strange beauty, Beatrix began painting fungi in the late 1880s but it was not until she made the acquaintance of Charles McIntosh, the so-called Perthshire Naturalist, that she began to make a serious study of them.  This fine drawing was not signed or dated by Beatrix, but it was for a time owned by Captain Kenneth Duke, one of her executors.  Doris Frohnsdorff, the distinguished Potter collector and antiquarian bookseller, purchased it and it was acquired from her estate.

Also from the Frohnsdorff estate is this beautiful drawing of a kestrel executed by Bertram in 1886, which displays his considerable talent as a natural history artist.  The small bird of prey is standing on one leg, the other one resting against the fluffy feathers on the lower part of the body.  Its bright black eyes stare fearlessly at the viewer.   Kestrels can be identified by the way they hover while hunting.  Since Bertram drew this specimen, the species’ population has dropped considerably.

Beatrix’s splendid watercolor over pencil drawing of Peter Rabbit’s head from ten different angles dated 1901.  It was torn out of a sketch book by Beatrix in 1928 and presented to seventeen-year-old Ernestine t’Hooft.  She was the daughter of a curator at the Museum Fodor in Amsterdam, who was visiting with the Lake District with her family.  During the visit, Ernestine bought a copy of Jemima Puddle-duck for her collection of Potter little books and the saleswoman told her that her favorite author lived nearby.  Her father wrote to Potter (or rather Mrs. Heelis) and asked if they might visit her.  The t’Hoofts were invited to tea and spent a very pleasant afternoon at Castle Cottage.  Before they left, she presented Ernestine with this marvelous drawing of Peter from ten different angles, inscribed and dated it 1928.  Ernestine kept her entire life: after her death, it came on the Dutch market.Last but not least is another new Potter acquisition that fills a gap in the collection–a  Christmas cards published by Hildesheimer and Faulkner illustrated from a drawing by Beatrix.  I’m not sure why coconuts were associated with the holiday season in the 1890s, but perhaps someone has an explanation?!

 

For the Friends of Flaco: A Picture Book About Owls

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Today I discovered a rather surprising book, Buebchens Traum  [Little Boy’s Dream], with a lovely snowy owl on the cover, by a Dagmar von Natzmer published around 1909 in Potsdam, by a firm in Potsdam, Germany.  No entry for her or the book in the usual sources, so she may not have written or illustrated another picture book.  Or maybe “von Natzmer” was her maiden name and she published under her married one later in her career.

The story is quite simple. A little boy falls asleep in the woods and has a marvelous dream about owls.  Not ominous birds of prey, like Mr. Brown in Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin or a whimsically befuddled creature like A. A. Milne’s Owl, who doesn’t quite manage to live up to his species’ reputation for wisdom.  Von Natzmer’s well-dressed owls look as if they belong in a parlor instead of the deep forest.

A mighty hunter looks with pride at his game sack filled with mice.

This handsome couple prepares to celebrate their nuptials in the woodland.

The band plays for waltzing birds in evening dress

and little girl owls twirling around in frilly pink dresses.

The boy wakes up at dawn and his dream of the elegantly anthropomorphized raptors vanishes.

How should we react to pictures of owls that diverge so far from the actual creatures?  A picture book this eccentric has its own peculiar charm, but it is also a bittersweet reminder of the differences between the projections of the imagination and undomesticated nature.

We can recognize Flaco in the hunter in green, having taught himself how to catch vermin after twelve years in captivity.  Of course the ones he ate were probably full of rodenticide.   The people who worried about how long he could survive in the wilds of New York City also were concerned that the Eurasian eagle owl would never find a mate.   He did hoot a lot from the heights of tall buildings–was he calling for a female?  Characterized as a very curious bird, we wanted to believe that his ability to explore and survive this strange new environment compensated for the lack of the companionship of his kind, at least for a while.  If he had settled down, surely he would not have chosen a female pretty in pink…

Von Natzmer’s owls reconfirm Beatrix Potter’s opinion that dressing birds posed a stiff challenge to the artist.  Jemima Puddleduck in her bonnet and shawl is a small masterpiece because of the way the fabric is draped around the contours of her meticulously realistic body.   But an owl in a military uniform?  Its legs are so long that the observant reader notices that the figure looks like an owl’s head stuck a little clumsily on top of a man’s body.   Those of us who never saw Flaco during the last twelve months will leave a deeper impression of “owlness” from the many photographs of him that captured the black eyes intent, yet expressionless stare, the beak’s cruel curve, the illusion of weight the splendid feathers lent to a four and a half pound body with a six-foot wingspan than the color illustrations of these fantastical owls.  Still, von Natzmer’s wonderful endpaper design of an owl in flight would make a beautiful card to leave under Flaco’s favorite tree in Central Park.