Handbags fashion: John Brewster, Jr.

John Brewster Jr. (May 30 or May 31, 1766–1854) was a productive, deaf-mute traveling painter who produced many charming portraits of well-off New England families, particularly their children. He lived much of the latter half of his life in Buxton, Maine, footage the faces of much of Maine’s elite society of his time.According to the website of the Fennimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, New York, Brewster was not an artist who by the way was Deaf but rather a Deaf artist, one in a long custom that owes many of its skin and achievements to the fact that Deaf people are, as scholars have noted, visual people.

Family and early life

Little is known about Brewster’s childhood or adolescence. He was the third child born in Hampton, Connecticut, to Dr. John and Mary (Durkee) Brewster. His mother died while he was 17. His father remarried Ruth Avery of Brooklyn, Connecticut, and they went on to have four more children.John Brewster Sr., a doctor and descendant of William Brewster, the Pilgrim manager, was a member of the Connecticut General Assembly and also vigorous in the local church.

Work as a deaf artist

Brewster probably communicates with others using pantomime and a small amount of writing. For an display of Brewster’s work, the Florence Griswold Museum describe what being a deaf portraitist would have meant in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in the United States: It is astounding then that Brewster traveled great distances, sometimes in areas that were unfamiliar, negotiated prices, decided poses and artistic ideas with his sitters, as well as living in the middle of his sitters of weeks or months at a time.Being deaf also may have given Brewster some advantages in portrait painting, according to the museum exhibit web page: unable to hear and speak, Brewster listening carefully his energy and ability to imprison minute differences in facial expression. He also greatly emphasizes the gaze of his sitters, as eye contact was such a critical part of communication among the Deaf. Scientific studies have proven that since Deaf people rely on visual cues for announcement [they] can differentiate delicate differences in facial expressions much better than hearing people.