Coming of Age

1930 - 1938

This affair may well have been the cause of Hugh’s finding himself on a ship, bound for New York in 1930. He was furious not so much because of the separation from his lover but because he was to be put into the care of his uncle and his older brothers. He was apprenticed to a firm of photo advertisers and went to night school at the Arts Students League, which boasted a formidable array of teachers at that time, Thomas Hart Benton, John Sloan, Stuart Davis and Hans Hoffman among them. Jackson Pollock and Mark Rothko were students as were others who would form the nucleus of the Abstract Expressionists. It seems likely that his strong grounding in contemporary art came at least in part from his experience at the school, which had such direct connections to the avant-garde.

Hugh, his brothers Rex, Alex and André and several friends lived in a succession of apartments on Morton Street in Greenwich Village. When asked why they moved so often, Alex said they kept being asked to leave because of their wild parties!

When Alex got engaged and Andre’ and Rex had returned to Trinidad, Hugh also went home in late 1932. On his return he renewed his acquaintance with The Society of Trinidad Independents and contributed drawings, poems, art reviews and articles on subjects as varied as Gandhi’s India, and the Calypso to the Beacon.

In January of 1933 he showed with the Society of Trinidad Independents in Port of Spain. The exhibition caused some controversy. Mothers were exhorted "don't let your children cross their doors lest what they see will shock and demoralize them".

He had another exhibition later that year and there were plans for the Independents to exhibit in London, which took place at the Brook Galleries in August 1934. His self-portrait, ‘Amore Propre,’ shown in the 1933 exhibition, attracted the interest of Ralph Seigmann, a somewhat flamboyant member of the Gay demi-monde, who commissioned a portrait, and who later took some of Hugh's paintings to Paris.

Hugh was bi-polar and during this time he was subject to bouts of depression, punctuated by unsettling mood swings.

Hugh and Daphne set up a business making lampshades and belts at the back of their father’s office in Charlotte Street, Port-of-Spain, probably in late 1936. Hugh tied a human effigy to a lamppost outside of the shop to attract attention. This appeared more to deter than encourage customers of which, Daphne remembers, there were few, so the venture was probably short lived.

← The Early Years (1912 - 1929)

→ Return to New York (1938 - 1940) 

Photos of Hugh