Albert Huie, who has died aged 89, was often described as the father of Jamaican painting. Although he produced folkloric genre pieces, his main concern was with his island's rich landscape and the physical beauty of its people. His appreciation of beauty occasionally got him into trouble. A locally famous example is his voluptuous nude Miss Mahogany. This caused an uproar when it was first exhibited in Kingston in 1960, and a second uproar 40 years later when it featured in Air Jamaica's SkyWritings magazine. There was such an outcry that the edition of the magazine had to be withdrawn.
He had perhaps more reason to feel slightly aggrieved by the way in which the intellectual elite of his own country had turned away from the kind of art he practised. In his latter years, the fashion in Jamaica was for "intuitives" – untutored artists, usually from a Rastafarian background, whose work resembles that of the voodoo artists to be found in Haiti. These were thought to be more representative of local sensibilities and, in particular, to reflect links with African culture – something that Huie could not claim to do.
He was born into a poor family during colonial rule and grew up in the town of Falmouth, Trelawny. The only member of his family who encouraged his ambition to be an artist was his grandmother Sarah. He used to scribble on her walls and floors with pieces of charcoal taken from her stove. He moved to Kingston, aged 16, and became a china painter, although his family wanted him to become a teacher. His first formal training in art came from the Armenian painter Koren der Harootian, then living in Jamaica. He was selected for shows of world art at the New York World's Fair (where he was a prizewinner) and the San Francisco Golden Gate exhibition, both in 1939.
Huie joined the circle of the sculptor Edna Manley and, from 1940 to 1944, served as a teaching assistant at the art classes she organised. In 1943 he exhibited his work at the Institute of Jamaica in Kingston, his first major solo exhibition and the first solo show given there to any living Jamaican artist.
In 1944, thanks to a British Council scholarship, Huie went to the Ontario College of Art in Canada. He later studied aesthetics at the University of Toronto. Two of his teachers in Canada, JEH MacDonald and Frank Carmichael, who had been founder members in 1920 of the Group of Seven, influenced his attitude towards landscape. Later that decade, when he moved to Britain, he went first to the Leicester College of Art and then the Camberwell School of Art in south-east London. Here he studied under Victor Pasmore and Claude Rogers, founder members of the Euston Road school, which emphasised the close observation of nature.
Later he settled in Canada, before moving to Baltimore. He received a number of Jamaican honours – the Institute of Jamaica Silver Musgrave medal (1958), the Gold Musgrave medal (1976), the Order of Distinction (1983) and promotion to Commander of the Order of Distinction (1992). One of his images, The Vendor, was also used on a Jamaican postage stamp.
In addition to Miss Mahogany, his best known images include The Counting Lesson, a portrait of a Jamaican girl, now on extended loan to the National Gallery of Jamaica, and Crop Time (1955) in the National Gallery's own collection. The Bahamian art historian Krista Thompson said of The Counting Lesson that it provides "a rare representational mirror of black Jamaica, allowing black viewers to attribute to themselves the signs of distinction, prestige and selfhood formerly reserved for the white colonial elite".
Huie was much loved for his genial personality and was always celebrated when he returned to Jamaica. He is survived by his wife, Phyllis, three daughters – Evelyn, Christine and Alicia – and three grandchildren.
• Albert Huie, artist, born 31 December 1920; died 31 January 2010
Edward Lucie-Smith. guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 17 March 2010 19.05 GMT
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