The Tale of The Flopsy Bunnies - Illustrations

Illustrations

In February 1909, Potter went to Hill Top, where, kept indoors by the inclement weather, she worked diligently on the illustrations for The Flopsy Bunnies. Various gardens became the backgrounds for Peter Rabbit (Camfield Place, Lakefield, Lingholm, Tenby in South Wales, Bedwell Lodge, and Gwaeynynog), and Fawe Park in Keswick became the background for Benjamin Bunny, but the background for The Flopsy Bunnies was a semi-formal garden of archways, walks, and flowerbeds in Wales at Denbigh at the estate called Gwaeynynog. Gwaeynynog was the home of the Burtons, Potter's uncle and aunt, and, while on holiday in 1909, Potter sketched their walled garden, and, once at home, decided to move Peter and Benjamin and their families to Wales for another Peter Rabbit sequel. A number of her preliminary sketches still survive.

Since her first visit to Gwaeynynog fourteen years before the composition of The Flopsy Bunnies, Potter had sketched the garden many times. She described it following a visit in 1895: "The garden is very large, two-thirds surrounded by a red brick wall with many apricots, and an inner circle of old grey apple trees on espaliers. It is very productive but not tidy, the prettiest kind of garden, where bright old-fashioned flowers grow amongst the currant bushes." Early in 1909 she wrote to her publisher, "I have done lots of sketches – not all to the purpose – and will now endeavour to finish up the F. Bunnies without further delay."

Judy Taylor, author of several books about Potter and her works, observes that Potter had difficulty drawing the human form, and, as a result of her limitations, restricted depictions of Mr. McGregor in The Flopsy Bunnies to his hands and feet. Any awkwardness in their depictions was minimized by presenting his hands and feet in isolation and from the bunnies' point of view. In the few full-length illustrations of Mr. McGregor, the need to depict his face was eliminated by presenting him in the middle or far distance and from the rear.

In contrast to her limitations with the human form, MacDonald points out that Potter's mastery in the depiction of rabbits attains full flower in The Flopsy Bunnies. Potter conveys the rabbits' thoughts and emotions with the position of the tail or the ear. Benjamin, Peter, his mother, and Flopsy all wear clothes, but Flopsy wears only an apron that exposes her tail and is thus incompletely clothed in comparison to her family and by human standards. But this incompleteness in dress permits her tail to be exposed and to precisely convey her apprehension as she approaches the house across the vast expanse of the lawn in search of her babies.

Potter's weariness with depicting rabbits is reflected in the book's pictures. Of the twenty-six illustrations, eight depict Mr. McGregor and seventeen the garden and its structures. There are almost no close-ups of the rabbits and none with the detail found in Benjamin Bunny. When the rabbits are depicted, they are viewed in the middle distance in order to include all six as well as the garden background. They are depicted with little or no facial expression. It is likely Potter (a farm owner at the date of the book's composition) had come to view rabbits as undifferentiated pests rather than individual personalities. Several drawings for the illustrations for The Flopsy Bunnies were given to the British Museum in 1946.