Basil Barrington Watson, OJ was one of Jamaica’s foremost painters and a central figure in the development of post-Independence Jamaican art. In 2000, he received the Institute of Jamaica’s Gold Musgrave Medal.
Born in Lucea, Hanover, Jamaica, on 9 January 1931, Barrington Watson first distinguished himself as a footballer at Kingston College. He ultimately chose art, studying painting at London’s Royal College of Art from 1958 to 1960. He continued his artistic education in Europe, including study at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam, alongside periods of travel and study at other European academies.
Watson returned to Jamaica in 1961, at the threshold of the island’s Independence in 1962. After teaching art appreciation at the University of the West Indies, he became Director of Studies at the Jamaica School of Art, now part of the Edna Manley College of the Visual and Performing Arts. There he helped establish a more rigorous program of professional art education, including the introduction of a full-time diploma.
His return coincided with a period of intense national expectation. Jamaica’s impending Independence encouraged artists, writers, educators, and political figures to consider how a distinct national culture might be expressed. Watson later recalled the exhilaration of the moment: “Everybody was excited and ambitious and thought they found themselves.” Within this atmosphere, he expanded his work beyond portraiture and genre scenes to produce ambitious paintings of Jamaican history.
Works such as The Morant Bay Rebellion (1964) and The Hanging of George William Gordon (1968) form part of this historical vision. They engage the Morant Bay Rebellion of 1865 and the execution of George William Gordon, events that became central to Jamaican anti-colonial memory and to the later making of national heroes. Watson explained his purpose plainly: “I pinpointed events that were very important in the development to Jamaica’s Independence.”
His history paintings can be understood in relation to the broader post-Independence work of national representation. During this era, Jamaica adopted or consolidated national symbols, including its anthem, motto, coat of arms, national flower, tree, fruit, and bird, and established a pantheon of national heroes. Jamaica declared Marcus Garvey a National Hero in 1964; Paul Bogle, George William Gordon, Alexander Bustamante, and Norman Manley followed in 1969; Sam Sharpe in 1975; and Nanny of the Maroons in 1976. Watson painted portraits or historical subjects of nearly all these figures, except Queen Nanny.
In 1964, Watson joined Eugene Hyde and Karl Parboosingh in founding the Contemporary Jamaican Artists’ Association, an important post-Independence grouping that helped advance professional artistic practice and public recognition of Jamaican art. He later served as a visiting professor at Spelman College in Atlanta. In 1967, he won a prize at the first Spanish Biennale in Barcelona.
Watson completed several major public and institutional commissions. These included The Garden Party (1975) and the installation Trust (1975), created with ceramicist Cecil Baugh for the Bank of Jamaica; the mural Our Heritage (1974) at the Olympia Art Center; and official portraits of Jamaican prime ministers. He also painted a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. for Spelman College in 1970, as well as portraits of Sir Shridath Ramphal for the University of the West Indies, Mona, in 1992 and Marlborough House, London, in 1995.
A painter of remarkable range, Watson worked in history painting, portraiture, genre scenes, self-portraiture, landscape, still life, nudes, and erotica. His work remained rooted in Jamaica—its people, social life, historical memory, and intellectual aspirations—while drawing on the academic realist tradition in which he had been trained. The National Gallery of Jamaica’s retrospective, Barrington: A Retrospective, surveyed 259 paintings and works on paper and recognised the breadth of that achievement.
Watson exhibited widely in Jamaica and internationally. He was the father of the sculptors Basil Watson and Raymond Watson. He died on 26 January 2016, aged 85.
He was the subject of Lennie Little-White’s 2015 documentary film, They Call Me Barrington.
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barrington_Watson
http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Barrington-Watson–A-life-in-paint_9905483
http://vm.instituteofjamaica.org.jm/vrtour/BWatson/index_intro.html
http://arcthemagazine.com/arc/2012/04/barrington-watson-as-history-painter/#sthash.Hu30IXrL.dpuf
