Migration & Exchange

In 1937, a 17-year-old Albert Huie (1920–2010) wandered into the Jamaican National Institute with a folder of works and demanded an audience with the secretary, Hender Delves Molesworth. Over the next few years he went from decorating ceramics on street stalls to being the first living Jamaican to hold a solo exhibition in 1943, a personal rise which coincided with Jamaica’s growing independence. In the year that Huie visited the National Institute, an aging Augustus John arrived in Kingston, hoping to revive an ailing career. Jamaica became the inspiration behind his resurgent exhibition of 1938, while he in turn encouraged talented painters struggling on the periphery of a large empire.