Beatrix Potter's fungi paintings on display
Post date: Jul 1, 2014 5:55:27 PM
A selection of wonderful watercolours have recently come to Birnam Arts & Conference Centre. The paintings are the work of the celebrated author and illustrator Beatrix Potter. The free exhibition titled 'Beatrix the Botanist' reveals her to also have been an excellent amateur mycologist.The Potter family holidayed many times in Scotland. As a young girl Beatrix spent every summer just a few miles from Birnam, and the area clearly inspired her interest in the natural world. It was not until she was 26 when she met Charles McIntosh, the local postman and renowned Perthshire naturalist, that she was encouraged to take the interest further.
Beatrix began painting fungi for their beauty and intrigue, but it was after she met Charlie that the paintings began to look more scientific. They began a correspondence which lasted for several years and Charlie would send fungi to Beatrix at her home in London. In one letter he suggested that Beatrix should also sketch cross sections of her fungal subjects, showing features of the stem and gill attachment for aid in identification.
Last week I joined the Beatrix Potter Society and Roy Watling at Birnam. We held a brief foray along the River Tay, exploring among the big trees just as Beatrix likely did. Overlooking the river was Eastwood House where, in 1893, she painted the rare Strobilomyces floccopus (Old Man of the Woods) and first wrote a picture letter featuring a rabbit named Peter. We heard how Beatrix was not just an artist but a fine observer who recorded exactly what she saw - an under appreciated skill that we should all develop as mycologists! Her studies culminated in a paper 'On the Germination of the Spores of Agaricineae' which she submitted to the Linnean Society of London. The significance of this paper, and of her fungi paintings - some original species records can be attributed to Beatrix - have only been acknowledged in recent years.
The exhibition closes on 13th July.