By any traditional metric, Sarah Biffin’s career was exceptional. S. Biffin achieved wide renown for producing miniature portraits and still life drawings – particularly of feathers – with the use of a brush in her mouth. Born “without arms or legs”, as her birth certificate states, S. Biffin’s physical condition – phocomelia – did not preclude her from pursuing a robust artistic career, first as an exhibitor on the English country fair circuit and later as portraitist to European nobility. Surviving documentation indicates that S. Biffin proclaimed her physical condition as part of her self-promotion strategy, suggesting that she was not only a talented artist but an adept businesswoman. S. Biffin enjoyed widespread celebrity, receiving a medal from the Society of Arts and was mentioned in several novels by Charles Dickens. Contemporary newspapers and journalists continually tracked S. Biffin’s career, contributing to her international reputation.

Born into a farming family in Somerset, UK, S. Biffin trained herself to sew and write using her mouth. Aged twenty, she signed an agreement with John Dukes, an itinerant artist, to display her abilities at fairs throughout the English countryside. Within this sensationalist environment, in which S. Biffin was promoted as “The Great Genius” and “The Eighth Wonder”, she displayed her talents in writing, painting and sewing. After about fifteen years, S. Biffin concluded her arrangement with Dukes, having earned support and recognition from George Douglas, the 16th Earl of Morton, who facilitated her access to formal artistic training with the miniaturist William Marshall Craig (ca. 1764–1829). With this additional training and accompanying professional connections, S. Biffin embarked on an independent career, taking a studio in London on The Strand and submitting her work to the Royal Academy of Arts in 1821. In the same year, S. Biffin travelled to Brussels, where she was appointed miniaturist to Willem Frederick, Prince of Orange. In 1824, S. Biffin married William Stephen Wright, about whom little is known, and she subsequently turned her attention to teaching in Birmingham, UK, where she lived and worked with two other artists: Mary Ann Saunders (dates unknown) and R. Hill (dates unknown). In the following years, S. Biffin relocated frequently between Brighton, London, Oxford, Windsor and Bristol, but maintained connections with the British royal family, becoming miniature painter to Princess Augusta Sophia, daughter of King George III, in 1830. She later moved to Liverpool, possibly in preparation for a journey to the United States, but established a studio and public display of her works there until her death in 1850.

A highly finished self-portrait from 1842 (held by the Baltimore Museum of Art) indicates S. Biffin’s status as an artistic celebrity equivalent to accomplished painters of the past. Wearing fine clothes at the height of fashion and with a carefully rendered hairstyle, S. Biffin portrays herself with a medal awarded to her by the Royal Society of Arts and with her miniaturist’s brush sewn to her lapel. Below her image, she has written: “Miss Biffin. Painted by herself without hands”, proclaiming her to be an artist who has earned recognition and acclaim through her own will and ingenuity.

Despite her considerable accomplishments, S. Biffin’s reputation faded with the declining popularity of miniature paintings in the later 19th century and her story has only been rediscovered through recent scholarship. The majority of her known works are found in regional British collections, such as those of the South West Heritage Trust and Somerset County Council, although her miniature self-portraits are in the collection of the National Portrait Gallery, London, and the Baltimore Museum of Art.