Big Earner (November 15)

Friday 14th November 2008

If you live in Gloucestershire and you’re lucky enough to find an original watercolour by Beatrix Potter hidden in your attic, then I suggest you get it down pronto, clean it up and get it valued. Even then, you might be surprised at just how much it would fetch at auction.

Potter’s second book, The Tailor of Gloucester, was inspired by a visit to her cousin, Caroline Hutton at Harescombe Grange, near Gloucester. It was here that she heard a local folk story about a John Pritchard who had been commissioned to make a waistcoat for the Mayor of Gloucester.

But, before he could finish it, someone else mysteriously did so, with the only clue being a note – “No more twist” – which was attached to a buttonhole.

Delighted with the tale, Potter transformed it into a story about Simpkin the cat and helpful mice. The story’s location led to the setting up of a Beatrix Potter shop in Gloucester.

In July, a painting by the immensely popular children’s storyteller and artist sold for an incredible £289,00 – nearly five times its upper estimate.

Together with other water-colours, Christmas cards and letters, the total sale came in at £748,200. Many of the watercolours, painted a decade before Potter’s first publication Peter Rabbit came out in 1902, were given away to friends. Just this week, Bonhams sold a watercolour of a rabbit that had not been published previously  for £15,600. The painting had been included in a private collection for about 50 years.

There was also very keen bidding for one of Potter’s early commercial works – it went for double its estimate at £12,600 – a Christmas card design of 1893 featuring three guinea pigs in a basket.

There are known to have been at least two versions of this design, with the animals in different poses and a blank space on the basket for a message. Then, story has it that, Beatrix borrowed the guinea pigs for models from her friend Miss Paget and used them later in her Cecily Parsley’s Nursery Rhymes.

“Potter’s world was by no means limited to that of Peter Rabbit and his friends,” explained a Bonhams’ spokesman. “Just as important are the unnamed mice, rabbits and cats that appeared in finished water-
colours. Their unique charm and the infrequency with which they appear at auction, creates a huge demand of this type of Beatrix’s work.”