AFA Winter 2017

Antiques & Fine Art 91 2017 I n 1817, Reverend Thomas Gallaudet, an educator interested in the deaf, and Laurent Clerc, an expert in sign language, established the Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons in Hartford, Connecticut. 1 The first school for the deaf in America, its students were taught the new French system of sign language and how to read and write. At a time when the deaf were objects of fear and prejudice, the Asylum represented a remarkable educational breakthrough. Among the people heartened by this new school was Aaron Fuller (1786–1859), who had two congenitally deaf sons, Aaron Jr. and Augustus. The late 1810s were a time of great transition for the Fuller family. 2 Aaron Fuller’s first wife, the mother of five children, including the two deaf boys, died in 1818. The family then moved to a prosperous farm in Deerfield, Massachusetts. In 1820, Fuller married Fanny Negus of Petersham, Massachusetts. Fanny’s father was an ornamental painter, her two brothers were artists, and her sister Caroline, who grew up in the Fuller home, would become a noted miniature painter. Aaron Jr., the older deaf son, was sent to the Connecticut Asylum in 1818, but his father’s difficulty in paying for his tuition meant that he stayed only two years. Meanwhile, interest in this new education prompted the Massachusetts Legislature to pass a bill in 1819 to establish a similar school. When the appropriated money was found to be insufficient, the funds were used to pay for Massachusetts children to attend the Connecticut school. This allowed both Fuller boys to attend the school in 1824, making them among the few fortunate deaf children to receive this special education. 3 The students were also given extensive vocational training, with Augustus attending drawing and painting classes. In late 1828, the sixteen-year-old Augustus had completed four years at the Asylum, and soon established himself as a portrait painter 4 (Fig. 1). Although Augustus wrote with an extensive vocabulary and could communicate with his father and several siblings who had learned sign language, his family preferred that he travel with a relative because of the difficulties he faced when interacting with strangers. For the next several years he often traveled with his father while seeking portrait commissions. In an 1832 letter describing an itinerancy through New York State, his father wrote, “[W]hen we go into new places . . . they have a great curiosity, first to examine Augustus, they think there is some witchery in him and must take time to investigate that first.” Augustus added a postscript, “[M]y arms are lame in consequence of painting portraits . . . about $130 . . . I expect others - many more.” That same year, Augustus wrote from Fort Plains, New York, “have six portraits nearly done and good encouragement of eight or ten more at fifteen dollars each — children half price. At Clinton finished eighteen and should have stayed longer but the alarm of cholera that sent the inhabitants out in the country.” Newspaper advertisements always stated that he was a deaf and dumb artist, and he usually proudly added this phrase along with his signature to the back of his paintings. Fig. 3 : Augustus Fuller (1812–1873), Young Child Holding a Bell, 1853. Watercolor on ivory, 3 x 2¾ inches. Inscribed on paper attached to the back, “Augustus Fuller, pinxt/Dec. 14, 1853/Deaf and Dumb.” Photograph courtesy of Sotheby’s. The inclusion of a bell may signify that the child was deaf. Fig. 2 : Augustus Fuller (1812–1873), Child on Red Sofa, North Adams, Mass., 1840. Watercolor on ivory, 2¼ x 1¾ inches. Inscribed verso “Augustus Fuller, pinxt/North Adams Dec 25/1840.” Collection of Pat and Fred Robichaud. Photograph by the authors.