Sarah Biffin
Self-Portrait
1841
Scroll
Sarah Biffin
Self-Portrait
1841
Physical Qualities
Watercolor and gouache on paper, Sheet: 330 × 251 mm. (13 × 9 7/8 in.)
Credit Line
Rhoda M. Oakley Prints, Drawings & Photographs Acquisitions Fund, Art Fund established with exchange funds from gifts of Dr. and Mrs. Edgar F. Berman, Equitable Bank, N.A., Geoffrey Gates, Sandra O. Moose, National Endowment for the Arts, Lawrence Rubin, Philip M. Stern, and Alan J. Zakon, and The John Dorsey and Robert W. Armacost Acquisition Endowment
Object Number
2022.199
With her miniaturist’s brush pinned to her cloak, Sarah Biffin presents herself as past generations of professional artists have done: wearing fine clothes and displaying an awarded medal. None of these details signal her status as a self-taught artist of working-class origins or her physical disabilities. Biffin had phocomelia, or as described on her baptism record, she was “born without arms and legs.” Biffin taught herself to use her mouth to write, sew, and paint, achieving significant fame as a miniaturist in her lifetime. Biffin took portrait commissions across England, strategically promoting her talents and her physical condition on circulated posters and flyers, indicating that she was not only an accomplished artist but also an adept businesswoman.
The Baltimore Museum of Art by purchase, 2022; Philip Mould & Company, 2021; Sotheby’s, New York, The Ricky Jay Collection, 27 October 2021, lot 64; Ricky Jay (1946-2018)
Possibly Anonymous. Sarah Biffin: The Armless Artist of Quantoxhead. The Somerset Year Book, vol. XXIV, 1925, p.67.
Smith, E. & Rutherford, E. Without Hands: The Art of Sarah Biffin. Exh. cat., London: Paul Hoberton Publishing, 2022.
Inscribed: Recto, lower left: "Miss Biffin. Painted by herself without hands. 1842."
