Tammy’s Reviews > Beatrix Potter: A Life in Nature > Status Update

When her brother was old enough for boarding school, she came out and no longer needed a governness. As an adult, she attended family parties and they held a special party to recognize her emergence. Because of her painful shyness, she did not enjoy it. Even though she was pretty and slim with clear blue eyes, her awkwardness kept away suitors. She faces the issue of being depending on her family with few choices.

When she took art exams, she earned scores of excellence. She and her teacher had different visions of art. Her parents were connected to the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood and artists gave her tips. She preferred their style but her favorite mediums wass watercolor. She was 17 when she went to her first exhibition. It blew her mind. In time, she realized she learned more from art museums than from teachers.

To her horror, it died the next day and she had to tell the neighbor. It did not ruin their relationship and she appreciated them even more when she became an adult. She feared that taking art lessons would change her unique and different style. Her teacher stretched her by exposing her to different media. She did not want lessons to interfere with her expertise in watercolor.

To her horror, it died the next day and she had to tell the neighbor. It did not ruin their relationship and she appreciated them even more when she became an adult. She took art lessons in a variety of media. She was worried because she knew her style was different and unique. She feared a teacher might change her style. She struggled with being stretched and she and her teacher had different artistic visions.

Based on her reflections, she was closest to her father and grandfather. There was a family with little girls who lived next door but she was never encouraged to play with them (or could it also be the other way around?). There was a widow with older, unmarried daughters who moved in and they had pet guinea pigs. Beatrix borrowed one to sketch and paint but it ate a lot of irregular stuff and drank ink.

She was closer to her father than her mother. Her mother was busy with the household and raising her brother. Her father compensated during the boy’s nursery years by giving Beatrix more attention. They had similar tastes and she benefitted from learning photography. It allowed her to put more realistic details into her work, which is funny because, in her stories, her animals wore clothes and did human things.

They collected and counting the bones and drew the pieces. They loved their pets but they also wanted to learn about them once dead. She was very introverted and was glad that her education was “neglected.” She thought that school would have killed her personality’s uniqueness or killed her due to her introversion. Her brother did board at other schools. I was correct that Unitarianism isolated her family.

She learned art from a variety of sources. Like CM, she hated moralizing realistic stories that preached. She and her brother collected quite a menagerie of animals and those animals traveled with them. They seemed to have three different places where they lived during the year and I can imagine it would have taxed her mother. The kids were avid nature notebookers. If a pet died, they stripped it boiled the carcase.

This book flows well with the picture studies I’ve been doing, especially the pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood artists, and the German Romantics. Beatrix is 20 years younger than CM and most likely what her education has in common has to do with the spirit of the air. She first had a nurse who became her younger brother’s nurse when she needed a governess. She had tutors for languages.

Some of her drawings reflected her fantastical ideas like a rabbit on ice skates. It was more than just flora and fauna that interested her. She had a great love of the scenery, in particular Scotland. They often spent an entire month on summer holiday there and she adored that life. Her father was an avid photographer and he has many photographs of her and some with famous people.