This is the one that started it all, and the one the auction catalogues treat as his masterpiece. It depicts the old nursery rhyme in which a sparrow shoots Cock Robin and the other birds hold his funeral. Potter used 98 species of British birds. He started the case around 1854, and it was ready to be shown by 1861 (debatable – possibly 1867). In 2003, it fetched the highest price of any piece in the sale of his museum collection.

Photo credits: Morris/Ebenstein

Probably his best-loved work and certainly my personal favourite. Twenty kittens in morning suits and cream brocade dresses attend a wedding conducted by a kitten Vicar at an altar. Most sources date it to 1890 and call it his last major scene (though one trade report states 1898). The Victoria and Albert Museum lent it for its 2001 exhibition, “The Victorian Vision: Inventing New Britain”. It has since been sold twice at auction: in 2003 and 2016.

The Vicar: Kittens’ Wedding: Photograph: Graham French/Getty Images

The Kittens Wedding main image: photo credit Morris/Ebenstein

Nearly fifty rabbits sit at desks in a village schoolroom, writing on slates. A good example of Potter’s humour: tiny, careful, and slightly odd.

It was sold in 2003 to a buyer in the United States

Top photo: Getty Images

Bottom photo: A postcard from Bramber Museum of the Rabbits’ Village School

Kittens drink tea and play croquet.

Of all his scenes, this one most closely matches what Ploucquet showed in London at the Great Exhibition in 1851, when his kittens drank tea.

We do not know whether Potter ever saw them. A private collector bought it in 2003 for £18,800 including fees.

Photo: Bonhams

Potter staged sport and play for his animals: guinea pigs at cricket, and squirrels playing cards in a scene called The Upper Ten, or the Squirrels’ Club. A rats’ drinking party also appeared. The artist Damien Hirst praised the hamsters playing cricket and, above all, the kittens’ wedding.

Not every scene was sweet or cute. One scene showed a rats’ den raided by police rats. Another, The Athletic Toads, was a mechanical scene of eighteen stuffed toads taking exercise. In an article about the 2003 sale, The Spectator said the writer and painter Errol Fuller owned it.

Top photo: The Guinea Pigs’ Cricket Match / Bonhams

Middle photo: The Rats’ Drinking Party / Bonhams

Potter also made scenes from stories, including The Babes in the Wood and The House That Jack Built, as well as a kingfisher in an underground den.

Alongside them were the natural curiosities that drew the crowds: two-headed lambs, a six-legged piglet, a Siamese pig and a monkey riding a goat.

In 2003, a buyer in the United States paid £7,000 for the goat and monkey.

Potter was largely self-taught, and the scenes show it.

Damien Hirst, who was a fan, wrote that the kingfisher in one case looked nothing like a kingfisher.

An auction house says his work “lacked anatomical correctness” but was “extraordinarily detailed”. That sums it up. His cases are not great taxidermy. They are great stories, told in great detail by a man who clearly loved telling them.

Photo: The Happy Family / Bonhams