Basil Barrington Watson CD (9 January 1931 – 26 January 2016) was a Jamaican painter.
Biography
Born in 1931 January 9th in Lucea, Barrington Watson made his original mark in Jamaica as a football player for Kingston College. However, he ultimately followed his artistic yearnings by enrolling at the
Royal College of Art
The Royal College of Art (RCA) is a public university, public research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City, London, White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design uni ...
in
London
London is the Capital city, capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of both England and the United Kingdom, with a population of in . London metropolitan area, Its wider metropolitan area is the largest in Wester ...
at the age of 20. Watson also studied at
Académie de la Grande Chaumière
The Académie de la Grande Chaumière () is an art school in the Montparnasse district of Paris, France.
History
The school was founded in 1904 by the Catalan painter Claudio Castelucho on the rue de la Grande Chaumière in Paris, near the A ...
in Paris and the Rijksacademie in Amsterdam. He travelled widely and then returned to the first Director of Studies at the Jamaica School of Art and co-founded the Contemporary Jamaican Artists' Association (1964–74)."Introduction" Barrington Watson: A Retrospective, National Gallery of Jamaica. He later served as visiting professor at
Spelman College
Spelman College is a Private college, private, Historically black colleges and universities, historically black, Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia ...
,
Atlanta
Atlanta ( ) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital and List of municipalities in Georgia (U.S. state), most populous city in the U.S. state of Georgia (U.S. state), Georgia. It is the county seat, seat of Fulton County, Georg ...
. In 1967 he won a prize at the first Spanish Biennale at
Barcelona
Barcelona ( ; ; ) is a city on the northeastern coast of Spain. It is the capital and largest city of the autonomous community of Catalonia, as well as the second-most populous municipality of Spain. With a population of 1.6 million within c ...
. In 2000 he was awarded a Gold
Musgrave Medal
The Musgrave Medal is an annual award by the Institute of Jamaica in recognition of achievement in art, science, and literature.Webster, Valerie J. (2000), ''Awards, Honors & Prizes, Volume 2'', Gale Group, , p. 447. Originally conceived in 1889 ...
by the
Institute of Jamaica
The Institute of Jamaica (IOJ), founded in 1879, is the country's most significant cultural, artistic and scientific organisation:Basil Watson and Raymond Watson. Watson is the subject of Lennie Little-White's 2015 documentary film ''They Call Me Barrington''. He died on 26 January 2016 at the age of 85.