Walter Geikie: the life, schooling and work of a deaf artist at the beginning of the nineteenth century

Abstract

The life and works of Walter Geikie (1795-1837), a profoundly deaf Edinburgh artist elected to the Royal Scottish Academy of Painting, Drawing and Architecture, are investigated as a source of insight into the experiences of deaf people in early nineteenth-century Scotland. Accounts of Geikie's early education, his family life and contacts with the rest of Edinburgh's deaf community are discussed in light of their possible weight as evidence that sign was recognized and used as part of the schooling of deaf students at the time. The artist's life is presented as an instance of the experiences of a profoundly deaf person at a time when the expectations of society regarding the education and socialization of deaf people was in process of expansion.