

Charles Macintosh, a Scottish naturalist she knew from her summers in Perthshire, encouraged her to work towards making her drawings more technically accurate. Invited to study fungi by the Royal Botanical Gardens in Kew, she produced hundreds of detailed botanical drawings and investigated fungi’s cultivation and growth. With Bertram sent away to school, she spent her time alone learning to drawing with her eye to a microscope, and eventually developed an interest in fungi. Ultimately, Beatrix was grateful that she was primarily self-taught, because she said had she been formally educated “it would have rubbed off some of the originality.” 1Īs Beatrix grew older, she became a talented naturalist.
#BEATRIX POTTER BIOGRAPHY MANUALS#
Instead, Beatrix copied from books and drawing manuals and studied the works of John Constable, Thomas Gainsborough, and J.M.W.

Though she did sit her Second Grade Art Student certificate at the National Art Training School in South Kensington, her education was largely neglected, as was common with Victorian women. During their summers in the north, Beatrix spent time observing and sketching plants, animals, and insects with a detailed eye. The Lake District, in particular, became an integral part of Beatrix’s life, and she later drew great inspiration from the area for her art. This love of animals continued to grow as the Potters traveled north every summer, first to Perthshire in Scotland, and later to the Lake District in Cumbria, England. Taught by governesses, including Annie Moore (who remained a close friend of Beatrix), in their home classroom, the children kept a multitude of pets for study, even smuggling in hedgehogs, mice, and frogs from the garden. From a young age, Beatrix and her brother Bertram Potter (born in 1872), showed promise as artists, constantly sketching animals from their classroom menagerie. An embroiderer and watercolorist, Helen joined him in an active social life, filled with writers, artists, and politicians, among them Sir John Everett Millais. Rupert was a qualified barrister, though rather than practice law, he spent his time focusing on his passion for art and photography. Beatrix’s parents were bourgeois Victorians who lived on inheritances from their families’ cotton trade during the industrial era. Helen Beatrix Potter was born on Jto Rupert and Helen Potter in Kensington, London. Home > Artists > Beatrix Potter Beatrix Potter Born: J| Died: DecemBiography
