KINGSTON, Jamaica – Jamaican Master Painter Barrington Watson has died.

The 85-year-old died at home in Kingston Tuesday night after being ill for some time.

He had on January 9, with a group of close family and friends, celebrated his 85th birthday.

The cause of death, according to a close family member, was pneumonia. The master painter’s attending physician was Dr Archie Hudson Phillips.

Watson was born in Lucea, Hanover in 1931 . He was educated at Kingston College, the Royal College of Art, London (1958-1960) and continued his study of the works of European masters at the Rijksacademie, Amsterdam, the Academia de las Bellas Artes in Madrid and other major European art schools.

He returned to Jamaica in 1962 to become the first director of studies at the Jamaica School of Art (now part of the Edna Manley College) and spearheaded a new curriculum which allowed graduating artists to filter into the areas of teaching, advertising and television, as well as the conventional fine and applied arts.

As a founding member of the Contemporary Jamaican Artists Association in 1964, along with his fellow painters Karl Parboosingh and Eugene Hyde, he quickly became one of the leading artists of the post-Independence period in Jamaica, whose work represents a turning point in the development of Jamaica’s cultural and artistic aesthetic and professionalised the local artistic practice.

His many accolades include the Institute of Jamaica’s Gold Musgrave Medal and the Order of Jamaica.