John Faunce Leavitt

Who was John Faunce Leavitt?

John Faunce Leavitt was a well-known shipbuilder, writer on maritime subjects, painter of marine canvases, and curator of Mystic Seaport in Mystic, Connecticut.

John F. Leavitt was born to the sea. His Maine family were sailors, as reflected in early photographs showing his seven-year-old sister Syrena and him at the wheel of the Alice S. Wentworth in Lynn, Massachusetts. Leavitt himself was a crew member on several coastal schooners in Maine beginning in 1918 until about 1925, the tail end of the schooner era.

Later in life, the boatbuilder and artist began working for the esteemed Mystic Seaport museum, where he continued painting and writing about his love: the sea and the boats built to withstand it. At Mystic, Leavitt worked as an assistant curator, applying his knowledge of sailing vessels to the museum's collection.

He continued to paint and write, and his watercolor and oil paintings are in the collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, and other museum and private collections. Leavitt painted everything from Old Ironsides to the Gloucester fishing schooner L. A. Dunton. In 1952 the maritime artist's works were the subject of a one-man show at the William A. Farnsworth Library and Art Museum, Rockland, Maine. Leavitt continued to write about the technical aspects of the shipbuilding industry, including the monograph Shipbuilding in Colonial Connecticut.