Julia Porter Dwight by Eliza Goodridge ca 1832

Elizabeth (Eliza) Goodridge (March 12, 1798 – April 18, 1882) was an American painter who specialized in

miniature A miniature is a small-scale reproduction, or a small version. It may refer to: * Portrait miniature, a miniature portrait painting * Miniature art, miniature painting, engraving and sculpture * Miniature (chess), a masterful chess game or problem ...

s. She was the younger sister of

Sarah Goodridge Sarah Goodridge (February 5, 1788 – December 28, 1853; also referred to as Sarah Goodrich) was an American painter who specialized in portrait miniatures. She was the older sister of Elizabeth Goodridge, also an American miniaturist. Life Goodr ...

, also an American miniaturist.

Early life

Goodridge was born in

Templeton, Massachusetts Templeton is a town in Worcester County, Massachusetts, United States. The population was 8,149 at the 2020 census. The town comprises four main villages: Templeton Center, East Templeton, Baldwinville, and Otter River. Geography According to ...

, the seventh child and fourth daughter of Ebenezer Goodridge and his wife Beulah Childs. Eliza's earliest miniatures date from the late 1820s and are similar in style to her sister's work, although not as technically advanced. At an early age, she began drawing and showed an aptitude for art. Women's educational opportunities were limited at the time and where Goodridge lived, so she was essentially a self-taught artist.

Career

Goodridge probably began her career in Boston working with her sister, but spent most of her life in the central part of Massachusetts. She lived in Templeton, Massachusetts, and made several extended trips to Worcester in the 1830s and 1840s, during which time she lived with and painted members of the Foster Family. The

American Antiquarian Society The American Antiquarian Society (AAS), located in Worcester, Massachusetts, is both a learned society and a national research library of pre-twentieth-century American history and culture. Founded in 1812, it is the oldest historical society in ...

's portrait collection contains the largest representation – 12 images – of Eliza Goodridge's known work. The

Worcester Art Museum The Worcester Art Museum, also known by its acronym WAM, houses over 38,000 works of art dating from antiquity to the present day and representing cultures from all over the world. WAM opened in 1898 in Worcester, Massachusetts, and ranks among th ...

also houses several of Goodridge's miniatures. Among Goodridge's better-known miniatures are '' Alice Goudry of Wilmington, Massachusetts'' in the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

; ''Stephen Salisbury III'' (1838), a

watercolor Watercolor (American English) or watercolour (British English; see spelling differences), also ''aquarelle'' (; from Italian diminutive of Latin ''aqua'' "water"), is a painting method”Watercolor may be as old as art itself, going back to t ...

ivory Ivory is a hard, white material from the tusks (traditionally from elephants) and teeth of animals, that consists mainly of dentine, one of the physical structures of teeth and tusks. The chemical structure of the teeth and tusks of mammals is ...

, in the

; ''Sophia Dwight Foster Burnside'' (ca. 1830), in the

collection; ''Julia Porter Dwight'' (ca. 1832), a portrait of the grandniece of Yale President Timothy Dwight, in the

Yale University Art Gallery The Yale University Art Gallery (YUAG) is the oldest university art museum in the Western Hemisphere. It houses a major encyclopedic collection of art in several interconnected buildings on the campus of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut. ...

New Haven New Haven is a city in the U.S. state of Connecticut. It is located on New Haven Harbor on the northern shore of Long Island Sound in New Haven County, Connecticut and is part of the New York City metropolitan area. With a population of 134,02 ...

, CT. Goodridge's landscapes include ''View of Mount Holyoke, Massachusetts and the Connecticut River'', ca. 1827, and ''View of Round Hill, Northampton, Massachusetts'', 1824, in the Worcester Art Museum.

Personal life

In 1849, at the age of fifty-one, Goodridge married Colonel Ephraim Stone, who owned a general store and sawmill in Templeton.Strickler, p. 63

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Goodridge, Elizabeth 1798 births 1882 deaths American women painters People from Templeton, Massachusetts Portrait miniaturists Painters from Massachusetts 19th-century American painters American portrait painters 19th-century American women artists