The romantic story behind the first “nudes” ever sent
Shortly after humans began wearing clothes around 70,000 years ago, we developed an obsession with nudity. In fact, as soon as Louis Daguerre presented the world with the first high-quality camera, with images that didn’t fade, in 1839, he opened the world up to a new age of liberation and many of the first images captured pertained to flesh. However, even before 1839, artists were working out ways to share lasting depictions of exposed skin with their fellows. In short, erotic art is nothing new.
While our obsession with “nudes” might have taken a rather troublesome turn a few years ago thanks to a problematic internet craze, the humble beginnings of this trend were far more romantic. The story involves a trailblazing miniature portrait artist named Sarah Goodridge and a lawyer named Daniel Webster.
Goodridge was born in 1788. In 1820, she began painting tiny portraits on 60mm canvases. This earned her a patch of fame. While a lot of her work was commissioned for lockets containing the image of a loved one, she was even exhibited museums such was the skill and dexterity she displayed.
Meanwhile, Webster was an esteemed lawyer making headway in politics. As a staunch federalist, he emerged as an outspoken opponent of the War of 1812 from the legal field. This won him election to the United States House of Representatives. Attaining such a lofty position meant that a portrait was in order. Thus, the married man of three children went to visit an esteemed local painter to commission the work.
That painter just happened to be Goodridge, and a passion blossomed between her and her new favourite subject. They sat for hours across from each other with Goodridge studiously observing his physique. Shortly after the two began exchanging romantic letters. Webster would destroy the lover’s notes that he received because the discovery of an affair would surely end his career, but Goodridge cherished hers and they can still be read to this day.
However, the most striking communication between the pair is one that simply couldn’t be tossed onto the fire. With art supplies becoming more available to the masses since the industrial revolution, the practice of painting was no longer an elitist pursuit. One of the offshoots of this was amateurs painting some tokens for their loved ones. Usually these abstract watercolours were of eyes alone, or perhaps a voluptuous pair of lips, of a simple hand-print.
However, Goodridge would drift her gaze down a few images and offer the world the first sultry private nude. Obviously, her breasts were far from the first to be cast in watercolour, but they were the first to be painted in a self-portrait fashion and sent off secretly to an admirer—in essence, the exact same as a modern “nude”.
She daubed her bare chest – cast very skilfully in the 3D fashion of optics – and proud pink nipples on a 2.5 X 3.1-inch block of ivory. She then sent this off in a carefully concealed package to Webster who is said to have somehow lifted his desk without the use of his hands when he opened up according to his deputy sitting opposite who was subsequently chaperoned out of the room.
This was 1828, and the 40-year-old Goodridge was smitten with Webster but understood that their love would have to remain private. Nevertheless, when Webster’s wife died the following year, you would imagine that Goodridge posed plenty of questions to him. All the same, Webster chose to try and advance his career even further by marrying the well-connected Caroline LeRoy and pilling her ample funds into his politics.
All the while, Goodridge remained working in the arts and frequently paid him visits in Washington to, ahem, paint. She might have completed many commissions for Webster over the years, but it was her unsolicited effort that remains the most striking today. The piece known as ‘Beauty Revealed’ is renowned not only for its place in sultry history but also for its skill and forward-thinking liberation.
While the effort may not have won Webster’s hand in marriage, as she may have intended, the pair remained devoted in some way. In fact, her visits to Washington are her only recorded departures from Boston where she died in 1853, only a few months after Webster passed away before him.
The legacy of her work lives on, as John Updike puts it in the essay The Revealed and the Concealed: “Come to us and we will comfort you, the breasts of her self-portrait seem to say. We are yours for the taking, in all our ivory loveliness, with our tenderly stippled nipples.” But from less of a male gaze perspective, maybe she was just feeling horny, playful, and frankly, very creative.
