JANE Pinkney, the mouse book illustrator from Keldholme, Kirkbymoorside, has sold £36,000 worth of pictures during her six-week summer exhibition at Nunnington Hall.

“It was one of our most successful shows ever, and Jane’s sales were up there with many of the much bigger names in illustration,” says Simon Lee, property operations manager at the National Trust’s Elizabethan country house in Nunnington, near York.

“She also sold a staggering 1,300 copies of The Mice Of Nibbling Village and we had 12,822 visitors throughout the show, so it was a well deserved success for Jane.”

Jane will continue to come to Nunnington to draw and sign books on most Fridays in the run-up to Christmas.

Her renaissance after her long creative hiatus will gather pace now that Chris Beetles, the world’s foremost dealer in illustration art, has signed her up for the Illustrators exhibition at his London gallery.

“Jane is the most exciting discovery for my gallery in years,” says Chris. “She has been as quiet as a mouse for years – busy being a mother – but she is going to hit London like a storm in November.

“This is work of great narrative quality that fits into the English tradition of anthropomorphic but not mawkish illustration. It has great charm.”

The Nunnington exhibition had its serendipitous roots in two encounters in the 1980s, as Simon recalls.

“Back in 1987 a young man walks into a hotel in Harrogate. An illustrator is there signing copies of her latest book. The young man and the illustrator chat; he purchases a copy of her book, then he goes about his way. “About six months before, in late 1986, a lady is in London. She is gazing into the window of Harrods. Harrods have a huge window display promoting a new book and a new illustrator’s work.

“While in London the lady has been advised to visit a certain London gallery. She goes to the gallery. They are showing an exhibition of original illustrations, and though the lady is a great illustrator herself, and though the window promotion in Harrods was for her own new book, she is too shy to introduce herself and slips away.”

There the story might have ended, the moment the illustrator left the Chris Beetles Gallery. “Except life can sometimes show signs of a strange synchronicity,” says Simon. “Fast forward 24 years to 2010. The telephone rings here at the hall. A lady is on the line who had been recommended to have a chat to us.

“She has heard that we put on exhibitions. She opens with the words, ‘You don’t know me but...” and continues her introduction, explaining that she illustrates books, and talks very modestly about her work. Little does she know that she was again speaking to the man who, 20-odd years before, had been so impressed by her work at the Harrogate hotel. The guy who had bought that book, The Mice Of Nibbling Village, all those years ago in Harrogate was me. The lady on the phone to me was Jane Pinkney. So the words ‘You don’t know me but…’ could not have been less true.”

Jane’s call set a train of events in motion: the exhibition, the re-print of The Mice Of Nibbling Village, the new association with Chris Beetles, and the chance to create new mouse drawings in the grounds of Nunnington Hall.

“In Spring 2010 after our phone conversation, Jane came to a meeting at the hall with two or three carrier bags that in the course of discussion she emptied across our tearoom tables. What I saw that morning was a collection of some of the most wonderful paintings, drawings and illustrations you could ever hope to see,” says Simon.

An exhibition was agreed for 2011.

“But it was clear there was far more than just an exhibition in what we were seeing,” says Simon. “We went on to discuss Jane painting here over the coming months: an artist in residence creating new work to sit alongside older works in the exhibition – ‘The Mice Of Nunnington Hall’? And then we got to thinking, could we get a book printed to go alongside the show?”

Negotiations with the National Trust’s publisher and Anova Books led to the dormant book’s reprint, a decision vindicated by the sales this summer.

Her residency could not have gone better. “The last year as our unassuming artist in residence at Nunnington has been a pleasure for the staff, the volunteers and the hundreds of visitors that Jane has drawn for and chatted with over the months,” says Simon.

Next comes Jane’s debut at the Chris Beetles Gallery. “Chris is a long-standing friend of Nunnington Hall and the team here; we’ve collaborated on many projects over recent years, and when this project started to take form, it was clear Jane deserved a far bigger global audience than what we could hope to offer her by our efforts alone,” says Simon. “That’s why we arranged for her to meet with Chris, and now that he’s representing Jane in the art marketplace, she could not be in better hands.

“So from one chance purchase of a book in 1987, and one later chance phone call some years later, has come this most unexpected story of mice, of publishers, dreams and friendships and a truly amazing exhibition.”