Beschreibung:

Fine original watercolors illustrating the This Pig Went to Market nursery rhyme.
1) This Pig went to Market; / This Pig staid at home; 2) This Pig had a bit of Meat; [and] And this pig had none! Two images on one sheet, each captioned. 3) This little Pig cried “Wee! Wee! Wee! / I can't find my way home!” N.p., [circa 1890]. Three graphite, pen-and-ink and watercolor designs, on cream cards (8 7/8 x 11 3/8 inches; 225x290 mm). Uniformly framed, matted and glazed. Condition : some slight fading and discoloration of the board, some spotting. Provenance : Hyde-Parker family (sale, Sotheby's 18 November 1999, lot 175 sold £73,000). the only known complete set of watercolors for ‘this pig went to market’ - here in their earliest form having been executed in the 1890s for the hyde-parker children . Beatrix Potter's cousin, Ethel Leech, married the Reverend Sir William Hyde Parker (1863-1931). 'Cousin Beattie', as Potter was known, often visited her cousins at Melford Hall, Long Melford in Suffolk. The present drawings were evidently drawn for the Hyde Parker children, and "Melford" appears on the signpost in two of the images: i.e. the lost pig trying to find its way "home" was looking for Melford. Early in 1922 Beatrix Potter met Anne Carroll Moore, the Superintendent of Children's Books in the New York Public Library, and the two became great friends. Although Beatrix Potter had not produced a book for some time, Anne Carroll Moore persuaded her to consider a book of nursery rhymes. The result, Cecily Parsley's Nursery Rhymes , was composed largely of re-worked drawings and verses from various periods including, as here, some as early as the 1890s. The book was ready for publication for the 1922 Christmas market. The only other set of similar watercolors are the redrawn examples used for the 1922 publication and are located in the British National Trust (though lacking the first in the series).