A Deaf Artist in Early America

Imagine what it must have been like to have your portrait painted in the early 19th century. First of all, before the camera was introduced via the daguerreotype in 1839, having a portrait painted was the only way to get a likeness of yourself. For most people, it was the only likeness they would obtain in their entire lifetime. It was, therefore, a pretty serious business, and its success depended on the rapport between the sitter and the artist.

This rapport was even more important when having portraits done of your children. In an era of high infant and child mortality, the act of portrait making took on a decided urgency. Early daguerreotypists used the phrase: “Secure the shadow, ere the substance fade.”

Considering all of the above, it is remarkable that the most successful folk portrait painter of children was a man who could neither speak nor hear. John Brewster, Jr. was born a deaf mute in 1766 in Connecticut, and grew up in a close circle of family and friends who probably learned to understand him through the use of improvised signs (American Sign Language had not yet been developed). In retrospect, it seems fortunate that he had artistic talent, for there was little else he would have been able to do.

Brewster learned to paint from a local portraitist and set off for Buxton, Maine with his physician brother in 1805. Within months he was painting elegant, serene portraits of some of Maine’s most prominent citizens. But his portraits of children are his most stunning works of art. The youngsters he paints float angelically on the canvas, with large, expressive eyes looking up at the viewer with yearning and fascination. His portraits of Franics O. Watts (top right) and "One Shoe Off" (lower left) are in the Fenimore Art Museum. The portrait of Comfort Starr Mygatt and His Son George (above left) and his half sister Sophia Brewster (above right) are in private collections.

Kids must have loved Brewster, and he must have had a special fondness for them too. Ironic, considering he never married nor did he have children of his own. What little we know of Brewster’s personality, from the1791 diary of a family friend, the Reverend James Cogswell, hints at him being a particularly engaging young man; “Brewster, the Deaf & D. young Man was at my House when I came Home. He tarried & dined here – he appears to have a good Disposition & an ingenious Mind. I could converse little with him, being not enough acquainted to understand his Signs. I pity Him - & feel thankful to God for the Exercise of my Senses.”

In his landmark book, A Deaf Artist in Early America: The Worlds of John Brewster, Jr., scholar Harlan Lane strongly suggests that Brewster’s deafness enhanced his powers of observation. Likewise, the presence of so many sensitively rendered faces with large eyes point to the importance of the face and particularly the gaze in communication among the deaf. In Brewster’s portraits we see the world literally through the eyes of a deaf man.

That’s the scholar’s point of view, and a valid one. But as I was leading a tour group through a Brewster exhibition we had at the Fenimore Art Museum a few years ago, I got a mom’s perspective. When I was pondering Brewster’s portraits of children she piped up and said; “Well, if he couldn’t hear the racket the kids made, he probably had more patience with them.”

I just smiled. When it comes to medicine or art history, you can’t out-diagnose a mom.

Folk Art in Moby-Dick

The greatest scholars, and the greatest writers, have an insatiable curiosity and an abiding respect for all humankind. This broad and far-reaching humanism is rare in any field, but there are dramatic exceptions. Herman Melville is one of these bright spots.

Folk art was appreciated by a few enlightened individuals by the 1920s, and only gained widespread acceptance in the 1970s. This is why it is astonishing to me that Melville thought enough of the material to devote a chapter to it in the middle of his classic Moby-Dick way back in 1851. In this chapter, entitled “Of Whales in Paint; in Teeth; in Wood; in Sheet-Iron; in Stone; in Mountains; in Stars,” Melville describes an old sailor on the London docks, displaying his stump of a leg and a painting of the whaling incident that cost him his appendage. Three whale boats, three whales. One whale crushing a boat – and the sailor within – in its massive jaws. In a statement that would only provoke derision until more than a century later, Melville proclaims “His three whales are as good whales as were ever published in Wapping [a dock district in London].”

Melville goes on to praise all manner of folk art of the sea, including whaling scenes like that described above (and the ones in the Mystic Historical Society, left, and in the Fenimore Art Museum collection below) and especially scrimshaw (the incising or carving of scenes or figures into whale teeth or bone, such as the Frederick Myrick tooth at the bottom) as “lively,” “ingenious,” and “miraculous.” He compares the scrimshander’s “maziness of design” with the legendary patterns of Achilles’ shield and the woodcuts of Albrecht Durer.

Radical words for 1851. And written by someone who knew his subject, knew how to capture a whale in body and spirit. Melville’s profound respect for sailors and their artwork is instructive and inspirational. It shows us how powerful and relevant the works of folk artists can be.

Especially when your art studio is a bunk below decks and you have to fit in your carving time between marathon fights to the death with a pale behemoth.

Framed in Maine!

It was one of the most dramatic “rescue stories” in American folk art. An iconic painting one small step away from the dumpster, spotted by knowledgeable collectors of the period. What happened became one of the collector’s favorite stories about one of her favorite pieces, the Fenimore Art Museum’s “Winter Sunday in Norway, Maine.”

The collector was Jean Lipman, who was also Editor of Art in America in the 1930 and 1940s. She had a thorough grounding in modern art and had written a feature on Stephen C. Clark’s collection (Clark, of course, was the main benefactor of the Fenimore Art Museum). Lipman had been collecting American folk art seriously since about 1938, meticulously recording each purchase in a little black notebook (now in the collection of the American Folk Art Museum in New York).

It was late in 1941, just about the time when the attack on Pearl Harbor thrust the United States into World War II, when Mrs. Lipman was on one of her week-long treks from her home in western Connecticut to Maine, scouring the countryside for folk art. She happened upon one of those “open barn” shops in Norway, Maine, about 40 miles north of Portland. An unassuming picture caught her eye; an eye honed by eyes of assessing the bold abstractions of modern art and the similar flattened and patterned compositions found in folk art. It was a townscape, oil on canvas, cheaply framed. Mrs. Lipman inquired about the price. Fifty cents was the answer: for the frame, of course. The “painting” was free.

The rest is folk art history. Mrs. Lipman bought the picture (or rather, the frame) and published it in her seminal book, American Primitive Painting, in 1942, and it became a star. Since the 1940s it has been in numerous exhibitions in the United States and Europe, appeared on the cover of Antiques Magazine, and was featured as a Christmas postage stamp by the U. S. Postal Service in 1969. Research has uncovered its source image, a 19th-century chromolithograph “copied” by the unknown artist.

And in the end, the Fenimore Art Museum benefited from Mrs. Lipman’s luck and acumen. When she negotiated the sale of her collection in 1950 to Stephen Clark (whose intention was to give the collection to us), Mrs. Lipman boldly asked him to pay her double what she had paid for each item.

The price to Mr. Clark for this icon: one dollar. To this day, I wouldn’t dream of replacing the frame.

A Bug's Life

It might be the most famous piece of folk art in America. Every day, thousands of people come within viewing distance of it but only a few notice. That’s because they fail to look up.

I’m talking about the famous grasshopper weathervane that sits atop Faneuil Hall in downtown Boston. It was made by coppersmith and tinsmith Shem Drowne and placed on its cupola in 1742. George Washington was only seven years old, and of course Boston, Massachusetts, and the rest of the colonies were thoroughly English. So technically this is a piece of Colonial English folk art. Drowne based his grasshopper on the weathervane that sat atop the Royal Exchange in London, and wanted the association with finance for Boston’s new marketplace and meeting hall. The vane is four feet long, weighs 80 pounds, is made of copper covered with gold leaf, and has glass eyes. And oh, what a history it has.

After the grasshopper was completed, it was reportedly shipped by accident to the College of William and Mary, where it sat atop the Wren Building until someone figured out that it wasn’t the Butterfly weathervane they had ordered. After finally making it to its correct location, the weathervane presided peacefully over Boston’s market district for about 13 years. In 1755 it was thrown from its perch by the Great Lisbon Earthquake, centered in the Atlantic and triggering a tsunami that nearly destroyed the Portuguese capital. Fortunately, Shem Drowne was still around, and he and his son Thomas took the damaged weathervane back to their shop in the North End and repaired it.

Its next quiet interlude lasted only 6 years. In 1761 Faneuil Hall caught on fire and the poor grasshopper was damaged again. This time, Drowne’s son Thomas did the repair work. Thomas was obviously enamored of the great vane and wanted to preserve its history. In 1768 he inserted a note into the belly of the grasshopper. The note was entitled “Food for the Grasshopper” and read:

Shem Drowne made it, May 25, 1742. To my brethren and fellow grasshoppers, Fell in ye year 1753 (1755) Nov. 13, early in ye morning by a great earthquake by my old Master above. Again, like to have met with Utter Ruin by Fire, by hopping Timely from my Public Station, came of the broken bones and much Bruised. Cured and Fixed. Old Master's son Thomas Drowne June 28, 1768, and Though I will promise to Discharge my office, yet I shall vary as ye wind.

In 1805 the weathervane was moved as Charles Bullfinch completely redesigned Faneuil Hall, with the cupola repositioned from the middle of the building to the East end. During the War of 1812, the grasshopper helped ferret out British spies. God help you if you didn’t know the identity of the unique item atop Faneuil Hall in Boston.

The final affront to the vane’s dignity occurred in 1974, when it was stolen. Miraculously, the thieves did not leave the grounds with the piece; they hid it under some old flags in the eaves of the cupola and it was discovered a few days later.

It’s a great American story for one of the greatest pieces of American sculpture. As a tribute to this famous piece of our heritage, weathervane manufacturer L.W. Cushing made his own version of the grasshopper for sale in the 1880s. We have one of these pieces in the Fenimore Art Museum collection. Every time I see it, I think of the fragile but resilient creature in Boston, the glided child of a tinsmith and silent witness to the centuries.