Illustration from Kitty-in-Boots will be shown for first time at the museum.
Coinciding with the 150th anniversary celebrations this year, the V&A is hosting a number of special displays focusing on Beatrix Potter’s life and work – including a never before seen illustration from new work, Kitty-in-Boots.
This year’s displays will include selections of manuscripts, illustrations and letters in The Tale of Beatrix Potter and Ernest Aris, and Beatrix Potter’s London, which will explore how she was influenced by the cultural life of her birthplace and reveal her close connection to the V&A.
Until recently, only one finished drawing and two rough sketches for Kitty-in-Boots had been identified.
Frederick Warne curator of children’s literature at the V&A, Emma Laws, has now identified a new drawing from the story, after it was brought to her attention from a privately owned collection.
Emma has identified that the drawing, which is not quite finished, illustrates a scene halfway through the story, in which Kitty appears in a woodland background alongside two ferrets and a little rabbit in a blue coat – recognisably the figure of Peter Rabbit.
The newly identified illustration is a significant contribution to picturing the story as Potter would have intended, and an insight into her working process.
The drawing will be shown alongside a page from one of her original manuscripts, a dummy book of the text of the story and two other drawings.
The V&A holds the world’s largest collection of Beatrix Potter’s drawings, literary manuscripts, correspondence, photographs and related materials, and hosts a regularly changing display on particular aspects of her work.
