A Beatrix Potter Photograph Album

The images below are from The Beatrix Potter Society’s collection of glass negatives taken by Rupert Potter, Beatrix’s father. They are all published by the Society in "A Beatrix Potter Photograph Album'
A little girl in a print frock and striped stockings' is how Beatrix Potter recalls her younger self in her Journal for 14 June 1884. She may just have been remembering the past, but equally she may have had an actual photograph in mind. Certainly she knew of the early photographs of herself and her family, and carefully preserved them in her later years. Rupert Potter, Beatrix's father, was a very keen amateur photographer from the early years of the art. The most obvious subjects for Rupert Potter's camera were his family and friends, and in particular his little daughter, of whom he was very fond.

When The Beatrix Potter Society came to consider how best to commemorate the fiftieth year since Beatrix Potter's death in December 1943, a selection from the Rupert Potter photographs, taken before her years of fame, seemed the most appropriate form for this commemoration to take. The glass negatives themselves had come to the Society from the collection of the late Leslie Linder. Many of these photographs appeared in print for the first time in the resulting publication A Beatrix Potter Photograph Album. No documentation accompanied the plates, and the identity of several of the sitters and, indeed, the dates and locations are unsure.

To view a larger image, click on a thumbnail. To return to this page click the Photo Album button.

01 Beatrix at age 5 (?)	02 Beatrix with Mr William Gaskell at Dalguise	03 Beatrix - 1	04 Beatrix - 2	05 Beatrix with unknown relation	06 Beatrix with her brother Bertram
07 Beatrix at Dalguise 1	08 Beatrix at Dalguise 2	09 Beatrix at Dalguise 3	10 Beatrix at Dalguise with Governess	11 Beatrix & Bertram with their father Rupert at Dalguise - 1	12 Beatrix & Bertram at Dalguise
13 Beatrix & Bertram with their father Rupert at Dalguise - 2	14 Beatrix & Bertram at Dalguise, probably with a relative	15 Beatrix and Bertram	16 Beatrix & Bertram with their father Rupert at Dalguise – 3	17 Family group at Dalguise	18 Beatrix & Bertram with their father and their dog, ‘Spot’
19 Beatrix with ‘Spot’ - 1	20 Beatrix with ‘Spot’ - 2	21 Beatrix & Bertram with their father and ‘Spot’, at Lingholm (?) on Derwentwater –1	22 Beatrix & Bertram with their father at their grandmother’s house, Camfield Place	23 Beatrix & her mother with relations or friends at Holehird, Windermere	24 Beatrix & Bertram with their father and ‘Spot’, at Lingholm (?) on Derwentwater – 2

If you would like to use any of these images in a publication, please contact beatrixpottersociety@tiscali.co.uk for arrangements to be sent high resolution versions.
For further details of the book mentioned above, as well as the many other publications of The Beatrix Potter Society, click this link
Further reading about Rupert Potter’s photography can be found in:-
Beatrix Potter’s Americans: Selected Letters. Edited by Jane Crowell Morse. Boston, The Horn Book Inc., 1982
The Journal of Beatrix Potter. Complete edition. Transcribed from her code writings by Leslie Linder. London, Frederick Warne, 1989
‘Rupert Potter and his photography’, by Michael Harvey, in The Beatrix Potter Society Newsletter, no. 45, July 1992 (summary of a talk given to the Society).
‘Rupert Potter visits London Zoo’, by Jenny Akester, in The Beatrix Potter Society Newsletter, no. 106, October 2007.
‘Through the Lens of Rupert Potter: a selection from the Society’s collection of photographs’, by Jenny Akester, in The Beatrix Potter Society Newsletter, no. 108, April 2008 (summary of a talk given to the Society).