Four rare, original Beatrix Potter Christmas cards found by chance in an attic are expected to fetch up to $150,000 at auction.

The hand-made water-coloured cards, pictured right, were in an envelope in a trunk found among boxes hoarded by relatives of two spinsters who shared great-grandparents with the artist.

Beatrix Potter sent the cards between 1890 and 1895 to the sisters, Elizabeth and Eleanor Lupton, who had lost their mother, Harriot, in childbirth.

The Lupton sisters, part of a wealthy family that owned textile mills in Leeds, were raised by a governess until their late teens. Following Harriot’s death, the family rallied around.

They were reunited by a strong non-conformist faith and it was in this spirit of support to a relative that Potter sent the cards.

The earliest one, depicting a mouse opening a larder door, dates from 1890 when the artist, then 24, received her first commission and cheque for £6 from Hildesheimer and Faulkner, greeting card publishers.

Another card, showing a family of mice eating Christmas pudding at a table, is signed “with best wishes Beatrix Potter. Dec. 93”. It was the year she began writing the first adventures of Peter Rabbit and the hedgehog Mrs Tiggy-Winkle in a series of illustrated letters to Noel Moors, the sickly child of a governess.

The letters were expanded into a book, The Tale of Peter Rabbit.

Rabbits feature on the two other cards, both bearing the artist’s initials, HBP. On one, rabbits play in the snow with a sledge, and on the other they ride bicycles.

The cards should sell for $25,000 to $38,000 each at Kidson-Trigg in Swindon, Wiltshire, England. They came to light at an antiques valuation day in a Wiltshire village.

Posted: 07|30|06 at 10:23 am. Filed under: UK News.