Landscape Painter
Vivian Virtue
Summary
The landscape painter Albert Huie is a famous Jamaican painter who the poet admires, and
whose process and methods she watches in awe as he captures the scenery as if the
landscape is a living thing getting ready to be painted, and showing their best side for this
painter. She is able to capture the painter in his element.
Stanza 1:
The first stanza gives a feeling of awe and calmness as the painter sets up to begin painting.
The easel is set to cover a part of the mountain, “straddling precariously” the way the easel is
set can be said to reflect the free will and freeness of painting as well as the tone of the poem
itself.
Stanza 2:
The poem encapsulates the essence of the environment, the painter paints the landscape
using metaphors of parts of the environment to show the process. This stanza describes the
movement of his brush like a hummingbird, quickly moving from one colour to the next,
drawn to them like the hummingbird drawn to the different flowers for nectar in a garden.
The use of the words like “tireless”, “Darts, dips” that are used add to the feeling of quickness
in this stanza.
Stanza 3:
This stanza begins to personify the landscape giving a mood of wonder and whimsicality to
the poem, it could also be that the painter has such command over his craft that it seems like
the mountains are in cahoots with him and are doing exactly as he wants. The mountains are
described as “Dignified, self-conscious, against the wide blue screen” showing the prominence
of the mountains in the painting against the sky as if showing authority. The hills are referred
to as grandchildren at the knees of the hill because compared to the mountains they are
small; they have yet to reach the size of the mountains, but mountains still have a ways to go.
As the blue mountain peak is behind them, the highest point in Jamaica, “Shouldering the
sky” gives an image of how high the peak is.
Stanza 4:
“And the professional gaze studies positions, impatiently waiting for the perfect moment to
fix” the painter is now getting ready to paint the mountains. We get the sense of the
meticulous nature of the painter, how fixated he is on capturing the perfect scene.
“their preparedness to confine them for the pleasant formality of the family album”, the
mountains are again being personified. We get the imagery of them all together ready to be
painted on canvas, it is not an actual album but a metaphor for them being on the canvas all
together in the painting.
Stanza 5:
“His brush a humming-bird meticulously poised”, this line is repeated again bringing us back
to the beginning. Again the hummingbird, although it is a quick bird, keeps its balance as a
beautiful bird that is also an emblem of Jamaica itself, its scenery and nature. The image of
the painter with his brush painting in great detail, careful and precise . “the little hills
fidgeting” as it was referenced before the hills are seen as the grandchildren and as children
do they move but that is not the reality as hills are stationary. It could be how the painting is
viewed by Virtue
Figurative Devices
Simile:
●​ “Sprawl like grandchildren about the knees” - the hills, smaller in comparison to the
mountains, are being compared to children
Imagery (visual):
●​ “On corner of the Twisted climbing mountain track”
●​ “dips, darts, now here, now there”
●​ “…Puzzles of pigment bloom in the pallets wild small garden”
Metaphor :
●​ “ tireless hummingbird, his brush” - his brush is compared to a hummingbird in
terms of how quickly it moves across the canvas
●​ “Puddles of pigment bloom” - the paints are compared to the blooming/blossoming
of flowers; the paints spread open in the palette the way a flower spreads when it
blooms
Personification :
●​ “ the mountains pose for him”
●​ “The little Hills fidgeting”
●​ “sprawl grandchildren about the knees”
Alliteration:
●​ “Puddles of pigment bloom in the palette’s”
Themes
●​ Nature
●​ Art