Cathy's Art Diary

Small display at the Victoria and Albert Museum highlighting the donation of over 2400 drawings and items relating to Beatrix Potter by Leslie Linder.  Linder died in 1973 and his collection was left to the museum. The display looked at how his collecting started with a drawing of gardening Guinea Pigs which led him to be a scholar of her work publishing “The Art of Beatrix Potter” in 1952.  Most significantly, when Potter’s niece, who inherited her house, discovered a collection of her journa ls written in code, Linder deciphered them discovering many of the stories behind the books.  In a few objects the display told this complicated story simply and clearly.  Closes 14 September 2024

Charming exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum looking at Beatrix Potter’s relationship with nature. This was a beautifully designed show and in telling this story it also told the story of the author's life. It looked at her study of nature and how that fed into her stories as well as her move to the Lake District and her role in forming the National Trust. There was lovely use made of the book illustrations as well as other drawings and sketch books. I loved seeing objects from her family home in Kensington as well as her later properties in the Lake District which often appeared in the books. Mr McGregor’s handkerchief anyone?! My favourite section was on her study of nature. It included a photo of her with her rabbit Benjamin Bouncer but sadly what also may be his pelt! I loved her wonderfully detailed drawings of plants and fossils. Closes 8 January 2022 Reviews Telegraph Evening Standard      

Nice little exhibition at the House of Illustration of work by Quentin Blake illustrating a book by Beatrix Potter. Potter had sent the words for the book to her publisher in 1916 but only completed one picture. The text was rediscovered 100 years later in the Victoria and Albert Museum archive and Quentin Blake was commissioned to illustrate it. The pictures were very distinctive Blake and there were some lovely witty images. It would have been nice to have the text with the pictures as it was hard to piece the story together just from the pictures. There seemed to be odd images such as the cat shooting crows which I am sure fitted in but looked odd out of context. I did fall for a lovely picture of a line up of three sheep and book plate incorporating other Beatrix Potter characters.   Closes on 27 February 2017  

Display at the V&A of work by Beatrix Potter from the years of the First World War. I must admit I thought this was stretching First World War shows a bit far! It was an interesting display and I guess said a bit about the home front but I did feel it was a connection getting pulled too far! I did like the section on how she got political just before the war and campaigned against the requisition of land horses producing a pamphlet about it with lovely illustrations. Her family described this a “The year Bea went into politics”. The rest was a bit marginal with some reference in letters to changes in the land such as women working on farms and some wistful pictures of the countryside, although as some of those were pre-war I wasn’t sure how they fitted in.