# - Potter, Beatrix.

i) 128 by 101mm., pencil and ink drawing, unsigned; ii) 128 by 100mm., pencil, ink and watercolour drawing, unsigned; iii) 128 by 101mm., pencil, ink and watercolour drawing heightened with gouache, unsigned; all 3 mounted together, minor spotting and browning, some soiling not affecting images, minor loss to extremities not affecting images

There is some minor spotting and browning. Some soiling is present but this does not affect the images. There is some minor loss, tears and uneven cutting to some edges, but not affecting images. There is an additional juvenile pencil addition of a tube by a later hand below one image. There is possible evidence of previous mounting to one image.
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Whalley, in discussing Squirrel Nutkin (see Beatrix Potter 1866-1943 - The Artist and Her World, London, 1987), notes that Beatrix Potter "obviously had no desire to paint squirrels in the same way that she painted mice: with the latter she usually made a meticulous, almost hair-by-hair painting, but when she came to the squirrels she often used a much more flowing line, which conveys something of their light airy movement. She had frequently drawn and painted squirrels in the past..."

The series of drawings offered here reveals three different stages of work on the same design. A version of the finished drawing was reproduced in the Linders' The Art of Beatrix Potter (London, 1972) p.154, where it was entitled "Squirrels on a Log". This became part of the V&A Collection (V&A396) and was reproduced, once again, in Hobbs and Whalley, Beatrix Potter - The V&A Collection (London, 1985), plate XV and Hobbs, Beatrix Potter - Artist and Illustrator (London, 2005), p.30.

Another version of the finished drawing together with a view of the back of the squirrels is present in the Warne Archive (see Hobbs, Beatrix Potter's Art (London, 1989), p.73). The illustrations were probably intended as a greetings card for Hildesheimer & Faulkner in the 1890s. The designs were considered by Frederick Warne in 1926 as covers for a calendar and Potter suggested they might also be used internally to illustrate the month of October.

The series of drawings offered here show differences in the position of the nut. There is also a possibility that the date 1894 is present at the end of the log.