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http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/25/arts/design/25anti.html?_r=1&adxnnl=1&ref=arts&adxnnlx=1156501299-xEO74ckn+c8nLQM3bfUcJQ&oref=slogin
“If you can’t hear, you somehow see,” the artist David Hockney said in an interview in 2001, reflecting on his declining ability to hear and how one sense compensates for another.
His conclusion is echoed in “A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr.” (Beacon Press, 2004) by Harlan Lane, a psychology professor at Northeastern University in Boston and author of several books on the deaf.
Dr. Lane’s book centers on John Brewster Jr. (1766-1854), an American folk art portraitist who, despite being deaf and mute, produced about 250 commissioned likenesses of subjects all over New England. The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Conn., has a show of 50 Brewster portraits titled “The World of John Brewster Jr.,” which was inspired by Dr. Lane’s book. It is on view through Sept. 10. (It opens at the American Folk Art Museum in New York on Oct. 4.)
Though there has not been a major exhibition of Brewster’s work since 1960, he is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the American Folk Art Museum; the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Va.; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.; and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Dr. Lane is convinced that Brewster’s deafness contributed to his visual acuity as a painter: “The mastery of sign language as a native language brings enhanced ability in visual perception and visual processing,” he writes.
Others share his view.
“I’ve always felt that Brewster’s deafness is a presence in his paintings,” said Nancy Druckman, a specialist in American folk art at Sotheby’s. “It kind of informs everything he does as an artist: I see it in the intensity of his concentration on his subjects, in his restrained palette and brush strokes and in the channeling of energy between artist and subject.”
The artist, who traveled throughout New England and upstate New York, worked in oil on canvas, oil on panel and watercolor on ivory (for miniatures).
“Though Brewster grew up in a privileged environment — he was the son of a Connecticut doctor and a seventh-generation member of a family that came over on the Mayflower — in that world he was seen as tragically afflicted,” Dr. Lane said. “His independence was unusual.”
Brewster was the third son of Dr. John and Mary Brewster of rural Hampton, Conn. Though largely self-taught as an artist, in 1790 he studied painting with the Rev. Joseph Steward, a family friend who was influenced by the British-trained Connecticut artist Ralph Earl. Earl famously portrayed his sitters in formal poses in opulent settings.
Brewster began by painting his parents at home. An early portrait of his father with his stepmother shows them seated at a drop-leaf table in front of thick drapes. A window reveals a bucolic landscape. His father, writing with a quill pen, wears white silk stockings and buckles on his shoes. His mother, shown reading a book, wears a simple brown dress with a white collar and lace trim.
The setting, with fine textiles and furniture, testifies to the couple’s refinement.
“He was, first, from a Puritan family,” Dr. Lane wrote of the artist. “He was also a member of the Federalist elite, the privileged post-Revolutionary class of merchants, clergy and professional men.”
Brewster went on to paint family friends and members of other prominent families. Many patrons put him up in their homes, sometimes for months, though it is unclear just how he communicated with his portrait subjects or negotiated fees.
In 1795 he accompanied Dr. Royal Brewster, a younger brother, to Buxton, Me., and began to work around Portland. He excelled at portraits of children in fine dress, accompanied by flowers, pets or toys. In one painting he portrays an unidentified child wearing one red shoe and carrying the other.
“Brewster’s ability to capture the essence of children and childhood with sensitivity, simplicity and, occasionally, whimsy, is unmatched in American folk portraiture,” said Ms. Druckman of Sotheby’s. In 1988 Sotheby’s sold “Comfort Starr Mygatt and Daughter Lucy,” for $852,500, the world auction record for a Brewster portrait.
In 1817, at the age of 51, Brewster enrolled in the nation’s first school for the deaf, the Connecticut Asylum for the Instruction and Education of Deaf and Dumb Persons, in Hartford. It was his first formal education, and he stayed three years, mastering sign language.
Nonetheless, after graduating, unlike many of his classmates Brewster went back to the hearing world, probably because he was so successful he wanted to keep working as an itinerant artist. He continued to paint portraits for the next 14 years. Eventually he returned to Buxton and died there at 88.
“He is so underappreciated in the American art field, apart from the American folk art community,” said Jeff Andersen, the director of the Griswold Museum. “To me there is a timeless quality to Brewster’s work. It’s very specific to Federal America and yet transcends it because of the directness of the subject’s gaze and the unvarnished realism of the way he represents his subjects. He seems quite modern to me, a bit like Lucian Freud.”
“If you can’t hear, you somehow see,” the artist David Hockney said in an interview in 2001, reflecting on his declining ability to hear and how one sense compensates for another.
His conclusion is echoed in “A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr.” (Beacon Press, 2004) by Harlan Lane, a psychology professor at Northeastern University in Boston and author of several books on the deaf.
Dr. Lane’s book centers on John Brewster Jr. (1766-1854), an American folk art portraitist who, despite being deaf and mute, produced about 250 commissioned likenesses of subjects all over New England. The Florence Griswold Museum in Old Lyme, Conn., has a show of 50 Brewster portraits titled “The World of John Brewster Jr.,” which was inspired by Dr. Lane’s book. It is on view through Sept. 10. (It opens at the American Folk Art Museum in New York on Oct. 4.)
Though there has not been a major exhibition of Brewster’s work since 1960, he is represented in the collections of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the American Folk Art Museum; the Abby Aldrich Rockefeller Folk Art Center in Williamsburg, Va.; the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass.; and the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, N.Y.
Dr. Lane is convinced that Brewster’s deafness contributed to his visual acuity as a painter: “The mastery of sign language as a native language brings enhanced ability in visual perception and visual processing,” he writes.
Others share his view.
“I’ve always felt that Brewster’s deafness is a presence in his paintings,” said Nancy Druckman, a specialist in American folk art at Sotheby’s. “It kind of informs everything he does as an artist: I see it in the intensity of his concentration on his subjects, in his restrained palette and brush strokes and in the channeling of energy between artist and subject.”
The artist, who traveled throughout New England and upstate New York, worked in oil on canvas, oil on panel and watercolor on ivory (for miniatures).
“Though Brewster grew up in a privileged environment — he was the son of a Connecticut doctor and a seventh-generation member of a family that came over on the Mayflower — in that world he was seen as tragically afflicted,” Dr. Lane said. “His independence was unusual.”
Brewster was the third son of Dr. John and Mary Brewster of rural Hampton, Conn. Though largely self-taught as an artist, in 1790 he studied painting with the Rev. Joseph Steward, a family friend who was influenced by the British-trained Connecticut artist Ralph Earl. Earl famously portrayed his sitters in formal poses in opulent settings.
Brewster began by painting his parents at home. An early portrait of his father with his stepmother shows them seated at a drop-leaf table in front of thick drapes. A window reveals a bucolic landscape. His father, writing with a quill pen, wears white silk stockings and buckles on his shoes. His mother, shown reading a book, wears a simple brown dress with a white collar and lace trim.
The setting, with fine textiles and furniture, testifies to the couple’s refinement.
“He was, first, from a Puritan family,” Dr. Lane wrote of the artist. “He was also a member of the Federalist elite, the privileged post-Revolutionary class of merchants, clergy and professional men.”
Brewster went on to paint family friends and members of other prominent families. Many patrons put him up in their homes, sometimes for months, though it is unclear just how he communicated with his portrait subjects or negotiated fees.
In 1795 he accompanied Dr. Royal Brewster, a younger brother, to Buxton, Me., and began to work around Portland. He excelled at portraits of children in fine dress, accompanied by flowers, pets or toys. In one painting he portrays an unidentified child wearing one red shoe and carrying the other.
“Brewster’s ability to capture the essence of children and childhood with sensitivity, simplicity and, occasionally, whimsy, is unmatched in American folk portraiture,” said Ms. Druckman of Sotheby’s. In 1988 Sotheby’s sold “Comfort Starr Mygatt and Daughter Lucy,” for $852,500, the world auction record for a Brewster portrait.
In 1817, at the age of 51, Brewster enrolled in the nation’s first school for the deaf, the Connecticut Asylum for the Instruction and Education of Deaf and Dumb Persons, in Hartford. It was his first formal education, and he stayed three years, mastering sign language.
Nonetheless, after graduating, unlike many of his classmates Brewster went back to the hearing world, probably because he was so successful he wanted to keep working as an itinerant artist. He continued to paint portraits for the next 14 years. Eventually he returned to Buxton and died there at 88.
“He is so underappreciated in the American art field, apart from the American folk art community,” said Jeff Andersen, the director of the Griswold Museum. “To me there is a timeless quality to Brewster’s work. It’s very specific to Federal America and yet transcends it because of the directness of the subject’s gaze and the unvarnished realism of the way he represents his subjects. He seems quite modern to me, a bit like Lucian Freud.”