Drawing of the month #7
Sarah Biffin (British, 1784-1850)
Self-portrait, 1842
Watercolour and gouache on paper, 330 x 250 mm, Baltimore Museum of Art, 2022.199
Andaleeb Badiee Banta, Senior Curator and Department Head, Prints, Drawings & Photographs, Baltimore Museum of Art, has kindly chosen our seventh drawing of the month.
One of the most engaging works included in the exhibition Making Her Mark: A History of Women Artists of Europe, 1400-1800, co-organized by the Baltimore Museum of Art and the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto, is the self-portrait of the miniaturist Sarah Biffin. Rendered in Biffin’s characteristically precise style, the self-portrait dates from 1842, by which time she had become a national celebrity. Dressed in fine clothes at the height of fashion, Biffin portrays herself wearing a medal awarded to her by the Royal Society of Arts, inserting her image into a tradition established by many accomplished painters of the past. This impressive presentation belies Biffin’s working class origins as well as her physical condition, phocomelia.
Born “without arms or legs,” as described on her birth certificate, Biffin taught herself to write, sew, and paint using her mouth. When she was twenty, she agreed to become an itinerant artist, traveling with John Dukes and his family, who showcased her talents for writing and painting on-the-spot miniature portraits at fairs through the English countryside. Promoted as “The Great Genius” and “The Eighth Wonder,” Biffin’s fame eventually provided opportunities to paint portraits of nobility and royalty in England and the Netherlands. By 1821, she had a studio on The Strand in London and submitted her work to the Royal Academy of Arts. She became miniature painter to Princess Augusta Sophia in 1830, and circulated frequently between Brighton, London, Oxford, Windsor, and Bristol. By the time Biffin painted this self-portrait, she had relocated to Liverpool, where she established a studio and public gallery of her works until her death in 1850.
In addition to emphasizing her celebrated status, this self-portrait bears several hallmarks of her work. Biffin was known not only for her portraiture, but also for her feather still life miniatures. The self-portrait includes this detail in Biffin’s fabulously decorated hat. Pinned to the shoulder of her ermine-trimmed cloak, which simultaneously highlights and obscures the absence of her arms, is her miniaturist’s brush, where she would have been able to reach it with her mouth. Just below her image is her signature in which she indicates “Painted by herself without hands.” Her penchant for calling out her physical condition appears in her signed works and her advertising posters and pamphlets, suggesting that she considered her disability a point of pride and used it to promote her talents.
Biffin’s self-portrait is just one of many works in Making Her Mark by European women artists who found ways to operate outside of the mainstream pathways of education, success, and recognition from which they were systematically excluded. Bringing together over 230 examples of women’s creative production across media, regions, and centuries, “Making Her Mark” confirms that women have long been involved integrally in the development of the history of Western art. The exhibition is currently on view at the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto until July 1.
