Albert Huie

(b Falmouth, Trelawny, 31 Dec 1920). Jamaican painter. He came to the attention of the Institute of Jamaica in the late 1930s, when he also received his early training from the Armenian artist Koren der Harootian (1909-91). He was assistant to Edna Manley during her art classes at the Junior Centre, Kingston, in the early 1940s. He went on to study at the Ontario College of Art, Toronto, and at the Camberwell School of Arts and Crafts, London. He was founding tutor in painting at the Jamaica School of Art and Crafts, Kingston, in 1950. Huie is best known as a landscape and genre painter. More effectively than any other Jamaican artist he captured the shimmering, atmospheric quality of the Jamaican landscape and the rhythm of life in the rural areas. Some of his works have socio-political overtones and express nationalist sentiments and his sympathy for the working class. He also made his mark as a portrait painter; his earliest major works are portraits, among them a portrait of Edna Manley (1940; Kingston, N.G.). His earliest works have a naive quality, while his mature work shows a strong Post-Impressionist influence. His style changed very little after the early 1940s, though in the 1960s he concentrated on the nude figure. While he usually painted in oil, his acrylic paintings are characterized by a more muted palette and a flatter design.

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