Tyler Bhola Naparima College 4A

Landscape Painter
Summary
The landscape painter Albert Huie, a famous Jamaican painter , admires the painter’s process as
he watches this method and speaks 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. Capturing the
painter in his element.

Stanza by Stanza Analysis

Stanza 1:

The first stanza gives a feeling of awe and calmness as the pater 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 the tone of the poem itself.

Stanza 2:

The poems encapsulate the essence of the environment, the painter paints the landscape as well
as him painting uses 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 word 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 getting capturing the perfect scene.

“ their preparedness to confine them for the pleasant formality off 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 is 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 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:

● “Grandchildren about the knees”

Imagery:

● “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”

Personification :

● “ the mountains pose for him”

● “The little Hills fidgeting”
● “sprawl grandchildren about the knees”
Themes

● Nature