Sarah Goodridge (February 5, 1788 – December 28, 1853) was an American painter who specialized in miniatures. She was the older sister of Elizabeth (Eliza) Goodridge, also an American miniaturist.
Goodridge was born in Templeton, Massachusetts, the sixth child and third daughter of Ebenezer Goodridge and his wife Beulah Childs. At an early age, she began drawing and showed an aptitude for art. Women's educational opportunities were limited at the time and where Goodridge lived, so she was essentially a self-taught artist.
In 1820, she went to live with her sister Eliza in Boston and began receiving lessons and painting miniature portraits of exceptional quality. Her work continued to improve and she earned enough from commissions to support herself and her family for several decades. Her paintings were exhibited in Boston and Washington D.C.. After her eyesight failed in 1851, she retired from painting and settled in Reading, Massachusetts.
Among Goodridge's most interesting and personal works is a miniature portrait of her own bared breasts, entitled Beauty Revealed, now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Executed in 1828, it was presented by the artist to her close friend, correspondent, and occasional subject, Daniel Webster (see reference below). Beauty Revealed was the inspiration for a miniature painted by the fictional heroine of Blindspot: A Novel (New York, 2008), by Jane Kamensky and Jill Lepore.
References
§ "The Philippe de Montebello Years: Curators Celebrate Three Decades of Acquisitions," Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York, 2008): Beauty Revealed, by Sarah Goodridge: http://www.metmuseum.org/special/philippe_de_montebello_years/exhibition/view.aspx?an=2006.235.74&pg=14
§ McHenry, Robert (1983). Famous American Women: A Biographical Dictionary from Colonial Times to the Present. Courier Dover Publications. ISBN 0486245233.
§ Hart, Henry (April 1898—April 1899). "Letter". Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society: p. 219.
§ Mason, George Champlin (1879). The Life and Works of Gilbert Stuart. Scribners. ISBN 1428608680.
