Basil Barrington Watson (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 research university in London, United Kingdom, with campuses in South Kensington, Battersea and White City. It is the only entirely postgraduate art and design university in the United Kingdom. It of ...

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. Watson also studied at Académie de la Grande Chaumière 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, historically black, women's liberal arts college in Atlanta, Georgia. It is part of the Atlanta University Center academic consortium in Atlanta. Founded in 1881 as the Atlanta Baptist Female Seminary, Spelman r ...

Atlanta Atlanta ( ) is the capital and most populous city of the U.S. state of Georgia. It is the seat of Fulton County, the most populous county in Georgia, but its territory falls in both Fulton and DeKalb counties. With a population of 498,71 ...

. In 1967 he won a prize at the first Spanish Biennale at

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. 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 a ...

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 Basil Watson, CD (born 1958), is a Jamaican sculptor. He is the son of painter Barrington Watson,Housen, Claudine.'Balance' on the Beach", ''The Jamaica Gleaner'', 26 November 2006. and the brother of sculptor Raymond 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.

References

Barrington Watson – The Artist
1931 births 2016 deaths 20th-century Jamaican painters 21st-century painters Commanders of the Order of Distinction people from Hanover Parish recipients of the Musgrave Medal {{Jamaica-painter-stub