A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr.

About this book

John Brewster Jr. (1766-1854) was one of the most prominent early American portrait painters. His hauntingly beautiful portraits have a directness and intensity of vision that were rarely equaled as the images in this book attest. Brewsters portraits have sold astonishingly well at auction and his work is featured in the collections of prestigious museums yet curiously little has been written about the life of this deaf artist. Traveling the New England coast to paint the portraits of the merchant class that arose after the Revolution he lived precisely when a Deaf-World-with its own language social institutions and culture-was forming. Harlan Lane award-winning historian of the Deaf argues that deaf people are often visually gifted and that Brewster as a deaf artist is part of a long and continuing distinguished tradition. Lanes unprecedented biography both vividly and comprehensively explores Brewsters worlds: he was a seventh-generation descendant of William Brewster who led the Pilgrims on the Mayflower voyage; he was a member of the Federalist elite; a Deaf man; and finally an artist. In 1817 at the age of fifty-one Brewster attended the first school for the Deaf in America the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf & Dumb Persons. Its extraordinary to imagine that this was the first time he experienced fluent conversation and real social and intellectual exchange. Yet as Lane notes Brewsters ambivalence about this minority reflects the difficult choices confronting many Deaf people then and now. Including little-known information on the French roots of the American Deaf-World; the Deaf communities of Marthas Vineyard Maine and New Hampshire in the nineteenth century; and on contemporary Deaf art A Deaf Artist in Early America provides a multifaceted glimpse of Brewster New England history and the distinctive culture language and social institutions of the Deaf in America.