Queen Elizabeth's Childhood Drawing, Which Her Mom Brutally Dubbed 'Very Poor,' Goes Up for Auction

The future Queen Mother critiqued her daughter's doodle in a letter to 'Peter Pan' creator J. M. Barrie

Before she was monarch, Queen Elizabeth was an expressive little girl, and now a piece of her artwork is up for sale.

The Boston-based RR Auction is currently selling a drawing believed to have been made by the future queen in the early 1930s when she was between the ages of 4 and 6. According to the auction house, the red crayon doodle is thought to depict Elizabeth’s take on a proposed new building at the Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children in London and was sent to the playwright J. M. Barrie along with a letter from her mother, best known later in life as Queen Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, which is also up for auction.

Barrie was a friend of the royal family and is best known as the creator of Peter Pan. The Queen Mother, who was known as the Duchess of York until the accession of her husband King George VI in 1936, didn’t conceal her feelings in the letter to Barrie and described her elder daughter’s drawing as “very poor.” Both the drawing and handwritten note are on 145 Piccadilly letterhead, signaling that they both likely came from the London townhouse where the Duke and Duchess of York lived with their daughters, then-Princess Elizabeth and Princess Margaret, before the unexpected accession.

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“My dear Sir James, I am so sorry that I did not realize that you were making your speech tonight, I am hurriedly sending round a very poor house I fear. Elizabeth insisted on putting in a roof with lots of little windows for the nursery maids,” the Duchess of York wrote to Barrie.

“Please, Sir James, will you not appeal in her name at all, as I have such difficulties over it, and I am not sure what it is that you wish to say. It is not that I would not feel proud to have her name mentioned by you, only I have had trouble keeping her name apart from charities etc,” she continued. “But I expect that you only wish to say that she drew a picture for you of what the hospital should look like.”

Hinting at unspoken protocol around privacy, she continued, “Please forgive me for saying all this, but you can imagine what troubles I get into! However, I hope that this very poor drawing may be of some little use. I write this in great haste after having met Cynthia [Lady Asquith] who told me that your dinner is tonight.”

The royal mother signed off simply as “Elizabeth” and stressed again that Barrie keep the correspondence private in a postscript.

“If you can manage it, will you not let the Press photograph this,” she wrote, RR Auction said in a statement.

Queen Elizabeth’s sketch and the Queen Mother’s four-page letter (envelope included) are being sold together as a lot as part of RR Auction’s Fine Autograph and Artifacts sale, which began on Dec. 15, 2023, and ends Jan. 10. The highest bid for the royal memorabilia is currently at $1,210 as the countdown to the final sale continues.

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The Great Ormond Street Hospital was a special place for Barrie, who lived next to the hub as he got his start in London. The home became his inspiration for the Darling family’s house in his bestselling book Peter Pan, and he later donated his rights from the novel to the hospital to help fund a new wing in 1929.

RR Auction said that Barrie’s success with the text made him a celebrity, and he met the little princesses at a party in Scotland. He was then invited to Princess Margaret’s third birthday in 1933, where she adorably declared, “He is my greatest friend, and I am his greatest friend” — a line that Barrie would weave into his 1936 play, The Boy David.

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Other items with royal provenance in the ongoing Fine Autograph and Artifacts sale include a Christmas card that Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip sent to his sister Sophie of Greece and Denmark in 1952. The shot stars a photo with then-Prince Charles and Princess Anne), and the young Queen signed her name as “Lilibet,” using the family nickname that would inspire the moniker Prince Harry and Meghan Markle gave their daughter Princess Lilibet, born in 2021.

The auction also includes two signed Christmas cards from Charles and Princess Diana. The first card, sent in 1985, was sent to Mrs. Daniels along with a photo of Charles and Diana standing beside Prince William and Prince Harry riding together on a pony. The second snap in 1987 showed the then-Prince and Princess of Wales sitting on a couch with their young sons, and was sent to Charles’ aunt Sophie and her husband George.

RR Auction might sound familiar to royal watchers, as the auction house memorably sold Princess Diana’s iconic Virgin Atlantic sweatshirt for $53,533 in 2019. The Princess of Wales strategically wore the top to the gym to create a repetitive photo op and dissuade the paparazzi from taking her picture.

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