watercolour study of a mouse standing on his hind legs in green coat and red bowtie, with autograph pencil note by Beatrix Potter above the image identifying it as the 'original for ['cover' scored through] title page of "Miss Moppet"', and further pencil note below instructing 'Reduce to 1¾ inches wide' by the publisher/printer, block-makers annotations on the reverse, 81 x 79 mm., framed & glazed , n.d. [1906]. A wonderful, original watercolour study of a significant character in Beatrix Potter's canon of children's books, and one of the few such remaining in private hands. The illustration is made all the more special by the additional autograph note by Beatrix herself, adding another tangible layer of connection with the author & artist. This drawing is the original study for the mouse that appears in The Story of Miss Moppet (see Lot XXX) , finishing the tale dancing a victory jig after having escaped the eponymous kitten. The drawing, despite featuring the distinctive colours of the mouse's costume that appear throughout the story, was only ever printed uncoloured on the rose-mottled title-page of the panoramic first edition, never being used in the subsequent standard-form edition and reissues. The illustration has been used, with the owner's consent, in a card issued for members by the The Beatrix Potter Society, but not otherwise publicly published. Copyright was claimed by Warnes (as a subsidiary of Penguin Books Ltd.) on the basis that the watercolour had not previously appeared in colour commercially and claimed a fifty-year copyright from 1992.