Description about the painting:
This painting is inspired by Gallaudet and Cogswell statue, and this is Laurent Clerc in place of Thomas Hopkins Gallaudet with Alice Cogswell. From the Gallaudet and Cogswell statue, the fingerspelling started with a letter 'A'.
With Clerc and Cogswell, the fingerspelling starts with a letter 'C' as in their last name, 'Clerc' and 'Cogswell.' Both of them have met in 1817 at Connecticut Asylum for the Education and Instruction of Deaf and Dumb Persons, the first permanent school for the Deaf in America, opened in Hartford. Both Clerc and Cogswell are Deaf and they felt that they are in the same world. The building in the painting is part of the American School for the Deaf.