Artist
Sarah Goodridge
American, 1788–1853
Sarah Goodridge was an American Romanticism painter. 7 works are cataloged here, principally at Metropolitan Museum of Art, most of them watercolors. Sarah Goodridge was born in Templeton.
Sarah Goodridge spent her life in Boston, teaching herself to paint miniatures on ivory, tiny portraits so sharp you could count the threads in a lace collar. She never married, never left New England, and never stopped painting even after her eyes gave out in her sixties.
She’s best remembered for one thing: around 1825 she painted a bold, unflinching miniature of her own bare bosom. She gave it to her friend, artist Gilbert Stuart, as a joke or a keepsake; no one’s sure which. It’s the kind of portrait that turns heads today because she painted herself without makeup, without vanity, just the soft pink skin and the tiny freckle above her left collarbone.
Look for her work in oval frames no bigger than your palm. She loved lace, real lace, so close your eye almost brushes the threads. Her backgrounds are plain, her faces caught in plain light, nothing fancy.
She didn’t need it. She could make a curl look like spun silk and a freckle look like a shadow.
Works by Sarah Goodridge
Collections represented
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