GREENAWAY (KATE)

'The Naughty Little Girl who went to see her Grandmama', AUTOGRAPH MANUSCRIPT ILLUSTRATED WITH ORIGINAL WATERCOLOURS [1885]

Footnotes

'I PROMISED TO SEND YOU SOME PICTURES OF A VERY NAUGHTY LITTLE GIRL - I'M SURE YOU WILL THINK SHE IS VERY BAD INDEED': Greenaway's gift to the 5-year-old resident of Ruskin's Brantwood.

Greenaway "was already a well-known artist when Ruskin wrote to her for the first time in 1880, thereby initiating a friendship and correspondence that lasted until his death" (Anya Krugovoy Silver, '"A Caught Dream": John Ruskin, Kate Greenaway, and the Erotic Innocent Girl', Children's Literature Association Quarterly, volume 25, number 1, Spring 2000). They met in 1883. In the summer of 1885, Ruskin was in the midst of a bout of madness, being cared for by his cousin Arthur Severn and his wife Joan who had moved into Brantwood a few years before. Greenaway became close friends with Joan, commiserating with her when her boys left for boarding school and ultimately sending the present story to her daughter Violet.

In the story, an irredeemably naughty girl wreaks havoc in her grandmother's garden, in a series of seven episodes. Greenaway was clearly pleased with the story, as further versions of it are recorded: one, sold at the Mrs George Martin sale in 1947, was rather improbably inscribed by her to "my dear Friend Oscar Wilde" in 1898 during his final exile in Paris; another appeared at Christie's New York (9 December 1998, lot 158), described as a miniature variant perhaps executed in preparation for a published version; Syracuse University holds another (SC 117).

Provenance: Violet Severn (1880-1940); loaned to Spielmann and Layard for reproduction in 1905; Hext family of Holywath, Coniston; Hext sale, Tennant's, 8 May 2010, lot 103.