Like the young nation’s leading academic painters, folk painters at the turn of the nineteenth century sought a style of art that expressed their subjects’ essential identity separate from the work of their European peers. This portrait painted by self-taught artist John Brewster, Jr., who was deaf from birth, shows sixteen-year-old Sarah Prince of Newburyport, Massachusetts, seated at her piano, a symbol of her musical accomplishment. She holds a piece of popular music entitled "The Silver Moon," a love song by English composer James Hook, first published in 1794 and widely reprinted in the United States. Because sheet music was printed from a single engraved plate, Prince’s partial copy must have been transcribed by hand. A study of the source music reveals that this is only the first line of the music, not even enough to capture the song’s full refrain. In Brewster’s thoughtful and eloquent portrait, Sarah rehearses the unfinished song of love while herself at the threshold of adulthood.