Beauty Revealed

The painting’s story and details

This watercolour on ivory measures only 6.7 by 8 centimetres. Sarah Goodridge made it in 1828. According to a tradition preserved by statesman Daniel Webster’s descendants, she painted her own breasts and gave the miniature to him. Such a personal image considerably expands the familiar picture of early nineteenth-century American portraiture, which usually represented a face and social position.

Goodridge includes only a small area of the body. Soft shadows give it volume, while the pale support strengthens the effect of light on skin. Face, clothing and professional attributes are absent. Under the museum’s identification, this is a self-portrait organised around bodily recognition and intimacy between the image’s maker and recipient.

Translucent fabric crosses the upper edge. Long fine strokes show it stretching and gathering at the side, with darker tones visible through the white. A miniaturist must distinguish materials within a few centimetres: the density of skin and lightness of fabric emerge from small changes in colour and brush direction.

The lower folds overlap and surround the body with a pale band. Grey shadows give the cloth volume although the paint remains thin. Enlargement reveals individual strokes. At the object’s actual size, they gather into soft transitions designed for close inspection of something small enough to bring towards the eyes.

A small brown mark remains on the skin. It gives the fragment an individuality that a conventional portrait conveys chiefly through facial features. Goodridge was a professional miniaturist skilled at achieving likeness on a small scale. Here that precision serves an image whose personal value could depend on a different detail of appearance.

The red case and pale inner border belong to the physical object now in the museum. The scholarly catalogue identifies the case as a replacement, separating its present appearance from the original gift. Small portraits often passed between generations, received new settings and carried family histories alongside the image itself.

Goodridge opened her own Boston studio in 1820. Gilbert Stuart advised her, and her earnings supported relatives and enabled her to buy a house. This miniature emerged from an independent professional artist’s practice. In 2006 it entered the Metropolitan Museum. An image associated with private exchange became publicly accessible, bringing a woman’s experience of intimacy into the history of American art.