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1927, with her signed autograph letter attesting as much, dated 20 March 1992; Miss Atterberg worked in the Rochester, N.Y. Public Library; the drawing was given by her in 1944 to 2) Ruth L. Adams (1912–1993), who had worked in the Rochester Library for nine years, as a leaving gift on the occasion of her moving to develop a children’s department at the Schenectady County Public Library, with her autograph note to that effect; 3) Peter Harrington; 4) The Schøyen Collection. Original drawing (image size: 35 × 48 mm) on paper (160 × 130 mm), ink and watercolour, signed and dated (“Beatrix Potter Aug 1927”) lower right together with caption and note (“This design appears in the first edition of Peter Rabbit”), mounted, framed, and glazed (framed size 358 × 302 mm). Label for the Schøyen Collection on verso. Some toning, loss to top left corner and tear not affecting image. ¶ Taylor, Whalley, Hobbs, & Battick, Beatrix Potter 1866–1943 , pp. 193–4. £22,500 [156827] 99 POTTER, Beatrix. “Learn to Read”. [1893?] original artwork A charming example of Beatrix Potter’s original artwork, probably dating from 1893 and developing an idea devised by the artist in the same year that she wrote the original Peter Rabbit picture letter. In 2022 the Beatrix Potter Society used this image as the design for one of the Society’s greetings cards. On 23 March 1893, Potter wrote a picture letter to Eric Moore which commenced “This old mouse is teaching its children to
read, you see it has made a big M on the slate”. There follows an ink sketch of a mouse surrounded by four small mice. (The original letter is in the Beatrix Potter Collection of Lloyd Cotsen.) The sketch was later developed into a more finished ink drawing (now in the V&A Collection, VA1022, and reproduced within the Linders’s The Art of Beatrix Potter ). It was common practice for Potter to rework her compositions and the present piece is undoubtedly a development of her earlier sketch into a pencil and watercolour drawing. It is the only time that the instructive “Learn To Read” is used with the word “To” replacing “M” on the mouse’s slate. Of interest is the distinctive colouring of the mouse. It exactly matches one of the mice in “Three Little Mice Sat down to Spin” (V&A Collection, VA1079) and presumably represents one of the artist’s own pet mice. Potter enjoyed the inventiveness of combining mice with letters of the alphabet. The original letter to Eric Moore includes a mouse swinging on an “M”, a mouse gazing at the top of an “I”, a mouse comfortably reading and nestled in a “C” and a mouse peering from behind an “E”. The Linder Bequest at the V&A includes some “Alphabet Designs” of which Anne Stevenson Hobbs notes “Beatrix Potter knew just what would amuse her young cousins and child friends . . . letters of the alphabet made fun – chewed and roosted in by mice and rabbits, or used as an umbrella”. Original drawing (62 × 96 mm) on card (88 × 132 mm), pencil and watercolour, unsigned, mounted, framed, and glazed (framed size 270 × 340 mm). Some toning to extremities of card, not affecting image. £27,500 [154691]
All items are fully described and photographed at peterharrington.co.uk
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