Potter's World

As a child, Beatrix Potter was encouraged to draw. She spent many a lonely hour making intricate childhood sketches of animals and plants revealing an early fascination for the natural world which would continue throughout her life.

On family holidays outside London, she enjoyed sketching landscapes. She made realistic studies of animals and birds but her imaginative art features rabbits wearing bibs and mice whose paws are busy with spinning, knitting and sewing.

Beatrix wrote to picture letters to several children. This was how The Tale of Peter Rabbit came to be written.

Although she did not go to school as her brother did, Beatrix was an intelligent and industrious student. She left a large body of remarkable scientific illustrations on fossils, archaeological finds, mosses and lichens, wild flowers, microscope drawings and, most importantly, fungi, which she donated to the Armitt Trust.