Folk portraits.( John Brewster Jr.)

For an American itinerant folk artist in the early nineteenth century, earning a living took patience, perseverance, and at least some skill at limning a likeness or painting a landscape mural. In the case of John Brewster Jr., being deaf and dumb must have made his life as a portrait and miniature painter even more challenging. Because a school for the deaf did not exist in this country until 1817, Brewster was illiterate, but he is believed to have used some form of hand signals to communicate with family members and to have possessed some skill in lip reading. Whatever the case, we do know that Brewster learned painting from Joseph Steward in Connecticut, who in turn was likely influenced by Ralph Earl. Many of Brewster's full-length portraits of important New Englanders painted between 1795 and 1800 are compositionally indebted to Earl. Brewster found his patrons in Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, and New York, much of the time through members of his family. In 1795 he moved to Buxton, Maine, to live with his brother, and he called Buxton home until his death in 1854.

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A traveling exhibition of Brewster's work entitled A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster Jr., organized by the Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, is now on view at the American Folk Art Museum in New York City, where it may be seen through January 7, 2007. It includes about fifty works, some of which were not on view in earlier showings.

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