Potter’s Christmas painting sold at auction

18/07/2008

A previously unseen watercolour book illustration by Beatrix Potter has sold for £289,500 at auction. This is the highest price ever paid for a book illustration.

The painting, which dates back to 1892, shows rabbits leaving a Christmas party and is the second piece of a trio painted by Potter. It was sold to a private collector at Sotheby’s in London for nearly five times its upper estimate.

The other two paintings from the series were sold at the same auction, but fetched lower prices, with a winning bid of £121,250 for a painting showing five rabbits wearing overcoats; and £22,500 for a painting of dancing guests. The trio of paintings depicts the characters that would later appear in Potter’s book The Tale of Peter Rabbit, which remains the world’s bestselling children’s book. Over 80 million copies are in circulation.

The trio of watercolours was part of an archive of illustrations, Christmas cards and letters that fetched a total of £748,200. Potter painted the watercolours more than nine years before self-publishing 250 copies of The Tale of Peter Rabbit in December 1901, after it was rejected by publishers.
Other paintings of animals depict horses, bears, cats, deer and cows. The collection also included private Christmas cards decorated with rabbits, which Potter painted for her friends and relatives.

Picture courtesy of Sotheby's Images