Purrfect Friends - influenced by Kate Greenaway's illustrations. (1846-1901)

This statue is designed by Chris Tubb, internationally famous miniature designer, and each one is hand painted by local Irish artists to the highest standards.
Scale from base to head is 65mm in height.

Kate grew up in suburban London, those areas where a few gardens and fields remained among the houses. She was a plain, shy, nervous child. Her father, an engraver and illustrator, sent Kate to art school to learn a profession. She attended a few "life classes" and the gruelling series of classes for the National Course in Art Instruction. These classes were intended to create artisans and industrial designers, not artists.

Kate Greenaway's enchanting drawings charmed the Victorians and still is popular today. Her drawings provide an idyllic vision of childhood and animals. She is one of the most popular and instantly recognisable illustrator of both animals and children. Her popularity extends around the world even though she only drew scenes of English children. The drawings are so popular in fact that many imagine them when they think of English childhood. They were certainly idealic and innocent. Most English children during the 19th century lived in very different circumstances. Greenaway's England was a world where happy, carefree children danced in enchanting flowery meadows.

The scenes are often peopled nursery rhyme characters. Greenway published an amazing diversity of books, cards, almanacs, and calendars. She had tremendous sensitivity of line and instinct for figure composition. Even more than her animal drawings, it is her images of innocent children wearing Empire dresses, smocks, pinafores and skeleton suits in garden settings holding nosegays, garlands and wreaths is that have proven the most enduring. There are many artists who have done cute animals, but her drawings of children are almost instantly recognisable. Her light, sketchy style was uncommon at the time, with the traditional illustrators trying to get as much detail and "verisimilitude" into their drawings as possible.

Kate illustrated her own verses, adapted classics like Mother Goose, and illustrated books for other authors.