John Brewster Born in Hampton, Connecticut, he was a deaf-mute who worked successfully as an itinerant portrait painter, especially of children, along the New England coast. He learned to communicate through writing. His portraits reveal a great deal of sensitivity towards the subject, likely a result of his extraordinary ability to concentrate. By the early 19th Century, he moved away from large, full scale compositions to portrait busts. In 1817, he enrolled as a member of the first class of the Connecticut Asylum for the Deaf and Dumb in Hartford. He learned lip reading and speech. His home in his last years was Buxton, Maine.

Biography with permission from AskArt.com

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