Heralding another Caribbean Stalwart - Painter Albert Huie

Albert Huie - Dec. 31, 1920 - Jan. 31, 2010

By John Maxwell

Feb. 7, 2010

Albert Huie, the most renowned of all Jamaican painters, died a few days before Rex. Huie was another piece of Trelawny mahogany, having been born in Falmouth, a dozen or so years before Rex. He was another feisty man of the maroon country who knew what he wanted to be at a time when country boys could become sign-painters, not artists. Albert told me that when he was a bare teenager he threw stones to help chase away gangs of bullies who had been hired to break up political meetings held by my father. My father, a penniless country parson, had challenged the power structure of Trelawny, then the last bastion of planter power in Jamaica. My father was running against one of the richest planters in Jamaica, Mr Guy Ewen; the leading lawyer on the north coast, head of the largest building society, chairman of the Parochial Board, custos of the parish and member of the Legislative council for 25 years.

Against all the odds, my father beat Ewen despite the fact, according to Albert, that Ewen's supporters had descended to hiring gangs of toughs to break up my father's meetings. The toughs would march up the road --liquored up -- swinging their kukkumakka sticks and making as much noise as possible, to the alarm of those waiting to hear my father speak. Huie and his friends would lie in wait for the marauders, armed with slingshots and rocks, and at a signal would attack the surprised bullies who ran in all directions shouting murder! Two or three such encounters stopped the rot.

Huie came into Kingston and headed straight for the Institute of Jamaica, then the centre of everything intellectual and artistic in Jamaica. There he was soon noticed by Mr Molesworth, the director, but more importantly by Edna Manley, who was teaching art classes there. Soon, he was selected to represent Jamaican art at the New York World's Fair. He was 18. Huie won several prizes at the fair and never looked back. He was a foundation member of the so-called Drumblair group. He did spend some time earning money by 'interior decorating' or house painting, but he never gave up his art and for years Albert could be seen with his easel, on various mountainsides or river banks, painting the Jamaican landscapes he loved. In a more civilised society Huie would have made a good living, but it wasn't until near the end of his career that patrons began to realise the importance of his work and began to pay for it.

I believe that Huie brought with him to Kingston something of the quality of light of his Cockpit Country backgrounds -- adding a mysterious quality that pervades some of his best work. His work is in collections around the world, not as well known as it should be, but now commanding the sorts of prices that should have made Albert a wealthy man. But his wealth is in his vision and he, like his fellow Trelawny man Rex, is a national treasure and fortunately, like Rex, he lived long enough to know that.

The title of this piece is "Jamaican Mahogany", because Huie and Nettleford remind me of the giant mahogany trees which during our lifetimes adorned the Cockpit Country. Their lightness and grace belied their immense size and it was only after they were no longer there that it is possible to understand what an important part of the landscape they formed. In the case of Huie and Nettleford, these were not simply a part of our intellectual and cultural landscape, they were also, more important, architects of the very landscape of which they were such important components.



http://www.jamaicaobserver.com/columns/Maxwell-Feb-7