[1] His father died in 1777 and a court ruled that Deseine, "being deaf and dumb from birth", could control his own income but had to have his possessions managed by guardians.
Soon after, he started working professionally: in 1783 he sold busts of Madame Saint-Huberty, Voltaire and Rousseau, from his house in Paris.
[2] Deseine had been a former pupil of l'Abbe de l'Eppe, a priest who had opened the world's first free school for the deaf, and developed a form of sign language.
The art historian Michael Levey has contrasted his Republican sensibilities, and the exaggerated character of his portrait studies, with the work of his royalist younger brother Louis-Pierre.
He successfully petitioned the Assembly for the right to make a full-size statue of l'Eppe based upon his earlier bust, but never completed this work: as time went on, all priests soon became objects of suspicion to the revolutionary authorities.