Edmund, Beatrix's grandfather, owned a calico printing works and was co-founder of the Manchester School of Design. The family had artistic leanings. Helen, her mother, was a fine embroiderer and watercolourist, and her father Rupert, though qualified as a barrister, focused much of his time on his passion for the new art form of photography he was elected to the Photographic Society of London in Rupert Potter's favourite photographic subject was Beatrix.
Photography was then a laborious process but Beatrix appears to have endured patiently the elaborate choreography and the camera's uncomfortably long exposure. The photographic record of Beatrix's life from childhood to marriage captures her at home in London, on holiday in the countryside, formal amongst family, or relaxed among her pet dogs and rabbit, Benjamin Bouncer.
It was Beatrix's delight to accompany her father on photographic expeditions. Happy to be by his side and excited by the possibilities of the new art form, she also became an avid photographer. She later inherited one of her father's old cameras, "a most inconveniently heavy article…which has been breaking my back since I took to that profession".
Through photography, Rupert instructed Beatrix in the art of composition, and she took photographs to record details that she would later use in her art. As a Victorian middle-class girl, Beatrix had a typically restricted and often lonely childhood. She rarely spent time with her mother and father and, educated at home by a governess, had few opportunities to meet other children. In art, she was self-taught at first.
She would later say that she was grateful for this; a less neglected education "would have rubbed off some of the originality". An eager student of languages and literature, she grew up loving classic folk and fairy tales, rhymes and riddles.
Her talent for drawing and painting was discovered early and encouraged. Beatrix also wrote imaginatively about her pets.
She and Bertram kept a number of much-loved and intensely observed animals in their schoolroom. In addition to rabbits, a hedgehog, some mice and bats, they had collections of insects — all identified and properly mounted — and all were drawn with the same accuracy that would later mark Beatrix as a distinguished naturalist. Early family holidays were spent at Dalguise, a country house in Perthshire, Scotland. Allowed freedom to explore, Beatrix honed her ability to observe the details of the natural world.
In the Potters began taking their holidays in the Lake District. Country life appealed deeply to Potter and years later she made her home there and produced some of her finest work. From to Potter kept a Journal in which she recorded her activities, as well as opinions about society, art and current events. It was written in a code she invented herself, which was not deciphered until In her sketchbook Beatrix practised observation by drawing; in her Journal she practised it by writing.
Both skills were paramount to the success of her books for children. As children they had many pets and animals which they smuggled into their schoolroom, ranging from frogs to hedgehogs and even rabbits. Whilst Beatrix was actively encouraged by her parents in her artistic and creative pursuits, she also benefited from her education by governesses, particularly Annie Moore, to whom she remained close into adulthood.
This was an exciting time for Beatrix and her brother, who were given the freedom to explore the countryside, further developing her keen interest in botany. Joining her on these holidays was her first pet rabbit called Benjamin Bouncer, who was said to have enjoyed toast at breakfast and accompanying walks in the countryside.
Her next rabbit called Peter Piper would serve as a companion also: it is not hard to see where the inspiration for a naughty young Peter Rabbit came from! Peter Rabbit. About the time she was sixteen, the family decided to holiday in the Lake District, a location she would fall in love with and remain passionate about until her death. The Potter family stayed at Wray Castle which overlooked the magnificent Lake Windermere, a beautiful landscape which would motivate much of her work in the future.
As part of this project she developed her own theory on fungi, accompanied by detailed sketches showing cultivation and growth. Beatrix would also benefit from the support of the Scottish naturalist Charles McIntosh, who helped her to embrace a more technical style of drawing that would help to become a well-rounded artist, adept at watercolours as well as scientific sketches.
Furthermore, her parents decided to enrol her at the National Art Training School based in Kensington in order to acquire her certificate as a Second Grade Art Student. Science's loss, however, was very much to the advantage of children's literature and conservation.
Five years after the Kew Gardens episode, Beatrix Potter, now 36 years old, began writing books at the rapid clip of two a year, beginning with Peter Rabbit. Tragically, Warne died of leukemia within a month. Beatrix Potter then seems finally to have started to mature as a person. She had hit upon a winning formula for her books: a simple story, a whiff of danger, much naughtiness and a cast of carefully anthropomorphized animal characters—never overly cute—whom she drew brilliantly in authentic settings.
The success of her books gave her confidence; the income from their sale gave her some independence. It was a place she had seen many times during the summers. Despite her landowner status, she didn't live on the property; still she was not free from her parents. For nearly a decade, the best access she could manage was to persuade her father and mother to rent nearby houses during the summers so that she could make the daily hike to her beloved farm.
Nonetheless, she bought up adjacent properties, putting together a series of parcels that protected the watersheds, ancient woodlands and the open fells where the sheep grazed. It was not until her father died in that she moved her mother to the Lake District and was finally free to make her home at Castle Farm, near Hill Top. There is a certain justice here: She had been brought up to manage a household, and finally she did. And, the year before, aged 47, she had married.
Her husband, William Heelis, was a Lake Country lawyer who helped with her purchases and shared her deep love of the land. For 30 years, they lived happily in the hill country, and the children's books progressively assumed less importance in her life. Country living was not at all easy. The winters were snowy with deep cold; the summers often brought drought or a flood. All the difficulties that beset hill farming, which made so many farmers willing to sell out to "Mrs.
Heelis," were visited on her. One problem concerned the sheep. The authentic Lakes breed was, and is, the Herdwick Sheep, a cold-hardy animal adapted to graze the harsh uplands. Typically, each farmer has a small piece of his own lowland pasture for overwintering. The rest of the year, his flock grazes on a portion a "heaf" of the communal, open-range fells, which are inaccessible except on foot.
Each year, new Herdwick lambs learn from their mothers the territories to which they will return the following year.
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