# - Potter, Beatrix.

89 by 80mm., fine ink and watercolour drawing heightened with gouache, unsigned, mounted, some minor spotting and browning

Some minor spotting and light soiling to the blank margins. There are a small number of spots with one causing a slight blemish to a cabbage leaf. There are some pin holes in the corners not affecting the image. The colour is extremely bright and vivid.
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an abandoned watercolour for the tale of peter rabbit.

The privately printed Peter Rabbit shows a robin examining a shoe in a cabbage patch but with the robin and shoe in the centre of the page.

Between January and April 1902 Potter revised the black and white drawings to produce a smaller number of coloured illustrations for commercial publication by Warne. The robin in the cabbage patch was retained but in a slightly different composition.

Taylor notes in That Naughty Rabbit that when Potter delivered the coloured illustrations "to Warne they were not entirely happy and asked her to do some of them again" (see Taylor, That Naughty Rabbit (London, 2002), p.46). One of these illustrations was of Mrs McGregor and the rabbit pie. this illustration may have been another, for it is different from the published scene which shows a slightly smaller rabbit shoe and a larger robin.

The history of illustrations for Peter Rabbit is fascinating. The fifth printing in 1903 saw the removal of four illustrations (restored in 2002) and a 1907 printing allowed Potter to redraw two illustrations (used for only six or seven years before returning to the originals). The centenary printing of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in 2002 saw two new illustrations that had never previously appeared.

Judy Taylor notes, of these new illustrations, "it is not known how many 'extra' illustrations Beatrix Potter produced for the first Frederick Warne edition of 1902 but these two... are the only ones known to have survived" (Taylor, That Naughty Rabbit (London: Warne, 2002), pp.105-106).

There are, evidently, a number of Peter Rabbit illustrations either redrawn, removed or restored. this present illustration is entirely unknown and appears to be an earlier version of the robin, shoe and cabbage patch. it has never been reproduced and is the only contemporary beatrix potter illustration for peter rabbit likely to be offered for sale.