Old Master and British Works on Paper

Sarah Biffin, later Mrs Wright

Portrait of a lady

Lot Closed

January 25, 07:49 PM GMT

Estimate

8,000 - 12,000 USD

Lot Details

Description

Sarah Biffin, later Mrs Wright

Quantoxhead 1784 - Liverpool 1850

Portrait of a lady

Watercolor and bodycolour heightened with gum arabic;

signed, inscribed and dated on a fragment of the original mount: Drawn and written by Miss Biffin without hands June 1843

358 by 260 mm; 14 by 10¼ in.

Private Collection, United Kingdom

E. Rutherford and E. Smith, Without Hands the Art of Sarah Biffin, London 2022, p. 91, no. 16

Sarah Biffin's history is a remarkable one. Born in Somerset without hands, arms or feet, she taught herself to paint holding the brush between her teeth. In circa 1797 a travelling showman, named Emmanuel Dukes, persuaded her parents to allow her to tour the country with him – exhibiting her talents (and disability) – for a salary of £5 a year. In 1808 she came to the attention of William, 16^th Earl of Morton, who organized for her to receive lessons in London from the Royal Academician William Craig (d. 1827).

Setting up a studio on Bond Street, she soon became very fashionable, in high demand from the aristocracy and receiving the patronage of the Royal family. In later years she was awarded a civil pension by Queen Victoria and in 1841 she moved to Liverpool, where she established a studio on Bold Street and where she would remain for the rest of her life.

The present work dates to June 1843 and comparable in scale and technique to her Portrait of Queen Victoria, after Edmund Thomas Parris, which was painted in the same year.¹

1. See E. Rutherford et. al, Without Hands, The Art of Sarah Biffin, London 2022, p. 100, no. 37