Carl Abrahams

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Carl Abrahams OD (May 14, 1911 – April 10, 2005) was a Jamaican painter from the parish of St. Andrew. He was born in Kingston, Jamaica and began his career in commercial art at the age of 17 as a cartoonist and an illustrator for The Daily Gleaner and The Jamaica Times.

In 1937, while on a working holiday in Jamaica, Augustus John, the iconic British artist, encouraged Abrahams to begin painting professionally. Abrahams taught himself to paint through self-study courses and manuals and by copying masterpieces from art books.

In 1944, during World War II Abrahams served in the Royal Air Force in England. By the mid-1950s he had found his calling as a painter of religious subjects.

The National Gallery of Jamaica said of his monumental series of 20 paintings of "The Passion of Christ" that "the devout sentiment of a true believer marked Abrahams as Jamaica and the Caribbean's finest religious painter."

His final decades saw few new developments in his style and he often repeated or created variations on many of his earlier paintings. Abrahams died peacefully at his home in 2005.

Works

• Last Supper
• Destruction of Port Royal
• Woman I Must Be About My Father's Business
• Adam and Eve
• Thirteen Israelites
• The Henry Ford Show
• Pan and His Musicians
• Backyard Preacher
• The Hand of Columbus
• The Ascension
• Hallelujah

Awards

• Royal Air Force (RAF) Award
• New York Critics Award
• Silver Musgrave Medal of the Institution of Jamaica
• Order of Distinction (Jamaica)
• Gold Musgrave Medal of The Institution of Jamaica

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