American Art Collaborative

Bust-length portrait said to be of Sarah Goodridge (also spelt Goodrich, 1788-1853) looking slightly to the left, with dark brown straigh hair parted in the center, wearing a red velvet dress with narrow white lace collar on a mauve background. Goodridge was born on a farm in Templeton, Massachusetts, the sixth of nine children. In Boston she took drawing lessons. Subsequently she was taught the technique of miniature painting on ivory and by 1818 was listed in the Boston directory as a miniature painter. In 1820 she opened her own studio and made a successful career as an artist. Among Goodridge's most interesting and personal work is a miniature portrait of her own bared breasts, entitled "Beauty Revealed," now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. Although the sitter resembles a self-portrait of Goodridge dated to 1830, she also appears somewhat younger in this work dated to ca. 1835.