Mouth and Foot Painting Artist.- Biffin (Sarah) After. Miss S. Biffin. Born at East Quantox-head, near Bridgewater, Somersetshire. Without hands or arms, engraving on laid paper by R. Sievier, sheet 330 x 265 mm (13 3/4 x 10 1/2 in), trimmed within the platemark, minor surface dirt with light spotting, inset at edges into mount, unframed, published by Biffin, 1821; together with another portrait after a lost self-portrait by Sarah Biffin of 1823, lithograph by H. Grévedon after Sarah Biffin, 255 x 215 mm (10 x 8 1/2 in), spotting and surface dirt, inset at edges into mount, published by Engelmann, [1823]; and a trimmed duplicate of the latter (3)
⁂ Sarah Biffin (1784-1850) was born in Somerset with no arms and vestigial legs. She learned to paint using her mouth and was apprenticed to an Emmanuel Dukes, who exhibited her work throughout England. In 1808 she came to the attention of George Douglas, Earl of Morton, who sponsored her to receive lessons from the RA painter William Craig. The Society of Arts awarded her a medal for a historical miniature in 1821, and the Royal Academy accepted her paintings. The Royal Family commissioned her to paint miniature portraits of them. When the Earl of Morton died in 1827 Biffin was left without a noble sponsor and she ran into financial difficulty. However, Queen Victoria awarded her a Civil List pension and she retired to a private life in Liverpool, where she died on 2nd October 1850 at the age of 66.
For the original painting that the Sievier engraving is based on see 'The Pohl-Ströher Collection of Portrait Miniatures, Part III', Sotheby's, lot 365 (sold for £137,500 incl. premium).
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