£ 6,500.00
Sarah Biffin
£ 6,500
This handbill advertises an exhibition of the artist Sarah Biffin, one of the most accomplished and entrepreneurial British artists at work during the nineteenth century. Despite its seemingly ephemeral nature, this piece has survived in an excellent state of preservation, constituting an integral component of Biffin’s artistic legacy.
Biffin was born into a farming family in Somerset in 1784, and her baptism records show that she was ‘born without arms and legs’. Teaching herself to write and draw from a young age, Biffin rose to fame as an artist and established a professional career as a portrait painter. Throughout her long and successful career, she travelled extensively, took commissions from royalty, and recorded her own likeness through exquisitely detailed self-portraits.
She began her career in 1804, at twenty years old, when a man named Mr. Dukes offered her employment as part of a travelling act: ‘it was suggested to my Parents that a comfortable living might be obtained by Public...
This handbill advertises an exhibition of the artist Sarah Biffin, one of the most accomplished and entrepreneurial British artists at work during the nineteenth century. Despite its seemingly ephemeral nature, this piece has survived in an excellent state of preservation, constituting an integral component of Biffin’s artistic legacy.
Biffin was born into a farming family in Somerset in 1784, and her baptism records show that she was ‘born without arms and legs’. Teaching herself to write and draw from a young age, Biffin rose to fame as an artist and established a professional career as a portrait painter. Throughout her long and successful career, she travelled extensively, took commissions from royalty, and recorded her own likeness through exquisitely detailed self-portraits.
She began her career in 1804, at twenty years old, when a man named Mr. Dukes offered her employment as part of a travelling act: ‘it was suggested to my Parents that a comfortable living might be obtained by Public Exhibition, and an engagement was arranged for that purpose.’[1] Biffin left her family home to travel across the country with Dukes; she signed a contract with her new employer and began a tirelessly itinerant lifestyle, exhibiting at fairs in regional towns and cities across the length and breadth of Britain.
As seen in this bill, Biffin’s exhibitions were publicly advertised in every town and city she visited. Employing sensationalist rhetoric, this bill advertises Biffin’s mastery in a multitude of creative pursuits, including writing, sewing, drawing, and painting, stating the time and place where Biffin’s exhibition could be viewed - in this case, at ‘Mr. Henzell’s, Long-Room, Old Flesh Market. Other handbills verify that paying visitors were entitled to a sample of her writing [fig. 1 and 2], of which the present works are superb examples. Typically consisting of Biffin’s signature, the date, and sometimes the location in which they were produced, these keepsakes would have been roughly cut with a knife or scissors and distributed amongst those who had paid to watch her work. Astonishingly, this handbill has been recently reunited with a surviving example of her work produced in Newcastle at this date [fig. 3]. The two works provide an unparalleled insight into the conditions she was working in at the very beginning of her career as an emerging artist.
Not only are bills such as these integral resources in researching Biffin’s early career and tracing her itinerant lifestyle, but they also chart her exceptional professional progression as an artist. At this date, Biffin is not referenced anywhere as an ‘artist’; however, by 1811, her professional status as a miniature painter is emblazoned in bold letters across her printed paraphernalia, evidenced in other bills from this period.
[1] Sarah Biffin, ‘An Interesting Narrative and proposals for a print of Miss Beffin to be dedicated, by permission to HRH the Princess Augusta’, p.1, 942 BIF/10, Liverpool Record Office, Liverpool.
