?Final Price Realized includes Buyer’s Premium added to Hammer Price
Estimate: $ 1,500 - $ 2,500
AMERICA'S FIRST DEAF ARTIST PAINTS HIS MASTERPIECE WEEDON, GEORGE. Autograph Letter Signed, "GWeedon," to Charles Willson Peale, concerning the artistic training of Weedon's adopted son William Mercer. 2 pages, folio, with integral address leaf; small tear in text area with slight loss to 2 words, seal hole in address leaf, short closed separation along center fold. Fredericksburg [VA], 20 September 1786
Weedon's brother-in-law Hugh Mercer had also been a Brigadier General in the Continental Army, but had died of wounds suffered at the Battle of Princeton in 1777. Weedon took responsibility for Mercer's five children, including William Mercer (1765-1839), who was deaf. In an effort to establish young William in a useful trade, Weedon sent him to study painting with the great portrait artist Charles Willson Peale in 1783. Mercer is now recognized as the first deaf American artist. In 1786, Weedon wrote to Peale: "I am sure it will give you pleasure to hear from your pupil Will'm Mercer. I wrote you some time since that I was likely to succeed with his female friends in sending him back to you for six months more. It has been a trying task, however, they have at last consented to part with him again. . . . I was ever persuaded to let him take the pictures of our family (six in number) before he went, which he is now about, and cannot get done in time. . . . The tragic scene of the death of Billy's father, I am very anxious to have. He tel[ls] me he had nearly finished it before he came away. I wish you would look at it when he returns, and if any touches be found necessary make him do it. He is the very picture of his father himself, was he made to be about 40 or 45 years old. And I must insist you will be so obliging as to sit for him yourself before you part. that he and his family may never forget the man who taught him a profession so admired by all men of science, and by which he is to get his bread." Mercer's painting of the Battle of Princeton is now owned by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Quoted and discussed in Ward, Duty, Honor or Country, pages 251-2, 260-1.
