Barrington Watson: Jamaican painter

Barrington Watson: Jamaican painter

 
Born in 1931 in Hanover, Jamaica, Barrington Watson is a Jamaican painter, writer and philanthropist. He enrolled at the Royal College of Art in London to work his art. He attended other academies in Amsterdam, Paris, Madrid and Rome where he worked on the concepts of African, Oriental and American art. He traveled extensively in the world and then returned to Jamaica, becoming one of the most influential artistic figures of post-independence.

Barrington Watson, an artist of Jamaican art.

He has exhibited all over Jamaica and abroad and is the subject of a documentary by Lennie Little-White “They Call Me Barrington”. In his painting, he paints various themes such as historical painting, genre, portraits and self-portraits, nude, eroticism, landscape and still life. But most of his paintings were inspired by Jamaica and his people.
Barrington has painted several important paintings such as the Garden Party (1975) and Installation Trust (1975, with Cecil Baugh) at the Bank of Jamaica, and the Our Heritage (1974) mural at the Olympia in Kingston. He has made numerous official portraits, former prime ministers of Jamaica, Martin Luther-King (1970) at Spelman College and former Commonwealth Secretary General and Chancellor UWI Sir Shridath Ramphal at the University of the West Indies – Mona) and Marlborough House in London (1995).
His work is well represented in the National Gallery of Jamaica Collection, with masterpieces such as Mother and Child (1958-1959), Lavandières (1966), Nightmare II of the Athlete (1966), Conversation (1981) And Fishing Village (1996), and is featured in many other public, corporate and private collections in Jamaica and internationally.
With Eugene Hyde and Karl Parboosingh, he founded the Association of Jamaican Contemporary Artists (1964-1974) and was Director of Studies at the Jamaica School of Art, introducing the full-time diploma. Later, he was a visiting professor at Spelman College in Atlanta. The talent is of family, because it is the father of the sculptors Basil Watson and Raymond Watson.

Prices worthy of his talent.

He has received numerous awards:

• The Order of Jamaica in 2006, the Order of Jamaica in 2006 and the Order of Jamaica in 2000.
• The Jamaica Museum of Fine Arts honored Barrington with a major retrospective in 2012, was organized by the Chief Curator, then Dr. David Boxer and guest curator Claudia Hucke and presented in Jamaica 50 National Gallery.

Barrington Watson was a prominent figure in Jamaican art after independence. On January 26, 2016, he died at the age of 85.

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