' ... the only one I really tried to copy was Randolph Caldecott ...'

Original drawing for 'A frog he would a-fishing go', Linder Bequest LB1040

January - April 2003, Beatrix Potter Showcase, Restaurant Foyer, Victoria & Albert Museum

Curated by Emma Laws

Text © The Trustees of the Victoria & Albert Museum

All Caldecott drawings © Victoria & Albert Museum

All Beatrix Potter drawings © F. Warne & Co. 2002
Frederick Warne & Co. is the owner of all rights, copyrights & trademarks in
the Beatrix Potter character names and illustrations.

A ‘jealous appreciation’

In her journal entries for 8th and 9th February 1884, Beatrix Potter recounts how her ‘extravagant’ father ‘went on the sly’ to the Fine Arts Gallery in London and bought ‘two small pen-and-ink sketches from Caldecott’s Frog’. Rupert Potter was a keen collector of Randolph Caldecott’s original drawings and Beatrix, sharing her father’s artistic interests, ‘bought his picture books eagerly as they came out’.

It is usual to distinguish Walter Crane (1845-1915), Randolph Caldecott (1846-1886) and Kate Greenaway (1846-1901) as heralds of a ‘golden age’ in English children’s book illustration. Walter Crane himself recalled, ‘In those days it was usual to bracket Kate Greenaway, Randolph Caldecott & myself together as special children’s book providers …’ (letter to Isidore Spielmann, 10th April 1905). Beatrix Potter, however, claimed that other artists ‘commonly bracketed’ with Randolph Caldecott were not on the ‘same plane at all as artist-illustrators’. Beatrix singled out Caldecott as ‘one of the greatest illustrators of all’ and wrote candidly of her ‘jealous appreciation’ of his work (letter to Jacqueline Overton, 7th April 1942).

‘A frog he would a-fishing go’

Original drawing for 'A frog he would a-fishing go', Linder Bequest LB1038 Beatrix maintained that her ‘best’ work was ‘done in imitation of Caldecott’. This is most typically exemplified in her exquisite sequence of drawings entitled ‘A frog he would a-fishing go’. Beatrix derived her ‘disconsolate’ angler from Caldecott’s gentleman frog in his picture book, A frog he would a-wooing go, printed by Edmund Evans for George Routledge in 1883 and later for Frederick Warne in 1895 (see below). It was for this picture book that Caldecott had prepared the two pen-and-ink drawings purchased by Rupert Potter in February 1884. Beatrix intended her drawings of ‘A frog he would a-fishing go’ to be published in a similar format but instead she agreed to three pages in Ernest Nister’s Holiday annual for 1896.

‘… never was an artist who could tell so much
with so few lines …’

According to his friend and biographer, Henry Blackburn (1830-1897), Randolph Caldecott ‘delighted in shewing the power of line in drawing’, conceding that ‘the fewer the lines, the less error committed’. More recently Rodney K. Engen has paid tribute to Caldecott’s ‘economy’ and ‘supreme control’ of line and his ‘unique ability to define the gesture of an animal with the flick of a pen’.

Beatrix too could evoke movement, humour and expression with a minimum of pen strokes. Her pen-and-ink drawings and impetuous pencil sketches exude an effortless spontaneity. Unlike the languid, melancholy figures in Kate Greenaway’s almanacs and birthday books, Beatrix’s animals, like those of Caldecott, are full of exuberance and energy – Beatrix’s frog leaping into his fishing boat and Caldecott’s frog springing to safety through the open window.

Wood-engraving for 'A frog he would a-wooing go', E.267-1899

Original drawing for 'A frog he would a-fishing go', Linder Bequest LB1031

;

Beatrix and Caldecott mastered ‘the art of leaving out’. They created depth and background with a few skilfully executed lines representing water, raindrops and river plants. Their drawings, unlike the densely decorated pages of Walter Crane’s picture books, seem to float on the page unimpeded by frames or borders.

The Tales behind the Pictures

Original study for 'The tale of Mr Jeremy Fisher', Linder Bequest LB 839 Beatrix Potter’s extraordinary flair for storytelling distinguishes her from many other children’s book illustrators of the ‘golden age’ who, rather than writing their own stories, illustrated traditional fairy and folk tales, fables and nursery rhymes. Randolph Caldecott illustrated such rhymes as ‘The house that Jack built’, ‘Bye baby bunting’, ‘Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross’ and ‘Sing a song for sixpence’. ‘A frog he would a-wooing go’ may be traced back to a mid-16th century work, The complaynt of Scotlande (1549).

Text and illustration are equal components in Beatrix’s stories. Beatrix paid great attention not only to the precise meanings and sounds of individual words but also to their physical appearance on the page. She composed the original version of her frog story in Dunkeld on 5th September 1893 in a picture-letter to Eric Moore, the son of her friend and former governess, Annie Moore. Although her drawings of ‘A frog he would a-fishing go’ accompanied some rather unremarkable verses by Clifton Bingham in Nister’s holiday annual for 1896, Beatrix’s own version of her story reappeared in 1906 as The tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, published by Frederick Warne.

Before Frederick Warne could publish The tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher Beatrix had to buy back the copyright of her frog drawings from Ernest Nister. Some years later she explained, ‘I bought back Jeremy Fisher; both all the pen and ink drawings and zinc blocks … directly after Peter Rabbit was printed. They [Ernest Nister] professed to have destroyed them until I bid them up to £6, when they were promptly “found”. They evidently thought me very eccentric to make a fuss about getting them back’ (letter to Fruing Warne, 16th June 1926). After Beatrix’s death the nine zinc blocks were found wrapped in a piece of brown paper on which was written, ‘bought back, with copyright, from E. Nister & Co.’.

‘A mistake to fly in the face of nature’

Studies of frogs, Linder Bequest LB 284 Beatrix claimed that ‘all writers for children ought to have a sufficient recognition of what things look like’. She criticised Kenneth Grahame (author of The wind in the willows) for describing ‘Toad’ as ‘combing his hair … A mistake to fly in the face of nature - A frog may wear goloshes; but I don’t hold with toads having beards or wigs!’ (letter to Mrs M.E. Wight, 26th June 1942).

Both Beatrix and Caldecott endowed their frogs with human emotions and habits which actually complement rather than contradict the frogs’ animal natures. Thus Mr. Jeremy Fisher lives in a ‘little damp house’, enjoys ‘getting his feet wet’ and is ‘quite pleased’ when it rains. Caldecott’s frog is terrified of cats and escapes out of the window in a typically frog-like fashion.

In order to replicate the correct postures and physical features of animals Beatrix and Caldecott examined and sketched stuffed specimens and skeletons in their local museums. Caldecott’s home at 46 Great Russell Street was conveniently located opposite the British Museum. Beatrix’s home at 2 Bolton Gardens was closer to the Natural History Museum in South Kensington. She described the museum as ‘the quietest place I know – and the most awkward’ (journal entry, Friday 20th December 1895). Beatrix also sketched her pet frog, ‘Punch’, and on one occasion presented her publisher with a live frog in a jam-jar to verify Mr. Jeremy Fisher’s yellow colouring.

Items on display

Randolph Caldecott
Original drawings for A frog he would a-wooing go (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1883).
Pen and ink


D.178-1903	D.179-1903

D.180-1903	D.181-1903

Randolph Caldecott
Wood-engraving produced by Edmund Evans for A frog he would a-wooing go (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1883).

Original drawing for 'A frog he would a-fishing go', Linder Bequest LB1029

E.267-1899

Randolph Caldecott
Original watercolours for A frog he would a-wooing go (London: George Routledge & Sons, 1883). Caldecott’s frog foreshadows both Mr. Jeremy Fisher (in The tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher, 1906) and Mr. Jackson (in The tale of Mrs. Tittlemouse, 1910). Beatrix may also have modelled Samuel Whiskers on Caldecott’s rat.


E.133-1948	E.134-1948

Beatrix Potter
Original drawings for ‘A frog he would a-fishing go’, published in Nister’s holiday annual for 1896.
Pen and ink with pencil


Linder Bequest LB 1038 (BP 507k)	Linder Bequest LB 1040 (BP 507m)

Linder Bequest LB 1031 (BP 507c)	Linder Bequest LB 1044 (BP 507q)

Beatrix Potter
Original drawing for ‘A frog he would a-fishing go’, rejected by Ernest Nister. A revised version appears in Frederick Warne’s The tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher.
Pen and ink

Linder Bequest LB 1029 (BP 507a)

Beatrix Potter
Three original studies for The tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher.
Pen-and-ink, pencil and watercolour


Linder Bequest LB 840 (BP 508b)

Linder Bequest LB 841 (BP 508c)	Linder Bequest LB 839 (BP 508b)

Randolph Caldecott
Study of a frog.
Pen and ink

E.3683-1932

Beatrix Potter
Studies of frogs.
Pencil


Linder Bequest LB 284 (BP 409)	Linder Bequest LB 284 (BP 409)

R. Caldecott’s second collection of pictures and songs (London: Frederick Warne and Co., [1895]. Engraved and printed by Edmund Evans).
It was Edmund Evans who suggested including some full colour pages; Caldecott preferred line drawings. Beatrix also favoured line drawings for her privately printed edition of The tale of Peter Rabbit (1901) but produced colour illustrations for Frederick Warne’s commercial publication in 1902.
National Art Library: 60.W.73

Nister’s holiday annual for 1896 : pictures and stories for little folks (London: Ernest Nister, 1896).
Beatrix intended her sequence of frog drawings to be published as a booklet; Ernest Nister initially offered only a double page in their Annual. The accompanying verses are by Clifton Bingham.
National Art Library (Renier Collection) Ren. 860

Letter from E. Nister to Beatrix Potter, 25th May 1894.
‘… I am a little doubtful whether we can take it, we certainly cannot make a booklet of it as people do not want frogs now. The only way in which we could use it would be as a double page in our ‘Annual’ and as you can imagine we cannot afford much for this. The days of these booklets are quite gone out …’
Linder Bequest LB 1473 (BP 790i)

Wrapping paper found after Beatrix’s death containing the nine zinc blocks bought back from Ernest Nister.
‘Zinc blocks of Jeremy Fisher bought back, with copyright, from E. Nister & Co for £3 or £5’. In fact, Beatrix paid £6 for the return of the drawings and their copyright.
Linder Bequest LB 1937 (BP 735d)