Artworks

WALTON FORD

“ln Beatrix Potter’s The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin (London, 1903), the red squirrels desire to gather nuts on an island owned by Old Brown, a tawny owl. To do so, they must bring a gift to the owl. During the nut gathering, the naughty and mischie-vous Squirrel Nutkin taunts Old Brown, who finally retaliates by biting off Squirrel Nutkin’s tail.

As a book for children, The Tale of Squirrel Nutkin has a moral implication about respecting one’s elders and one’s “betters” – a popular admonishment in the hierarchical social order of late-Victorian England. Walton Ford’s depiction of angry squirrels taunting and attacking a startled tawny owl suggests a new scenario that moves Potter’s tale into a metaphor for contemporary Great Britain and the political and social agenda of Tony Blair’s New Labour government. ln 2000, Blair and the Labour-dominated House of Commons succeeded in bringing an abrupt change to Parliament’s second house, the House of Lords. they revoked the centuries old hereditary right of peers to sit in the House of Lords, a giant step toward a more egalitarian British society.”

– David Kiehl