AT a time when the talents of local artists were not quite as appreciated as they are today, Robert V. Barritt was lucky.

His ability was recognised by the nuns at Mount St. Agnes Academy while he was a boy of 12. It left such an impression on the school's art teacher, she immediately recommended he enrol in extracurricular study to hone his skill.

So began the artistic career of a man whose talent is being honoured with a public display of his work, at the Bermuda National Gallery.

The tribute, which will be showcased in the Gallery's Lower Mezzanine, forms part of the art museum's Winter Exhibitions, which open to the public today.

"I started drawing at Mount St. Agnes," Mr. Barritt recalled. "In those days, the nuns used to wear a habit, robes and all sorts of stuff. I did a sketch of a teacher and she saw it and sent it to the art teacher."

Now 77, Mr. Barritt said he never feared his doodling would get him into trouble, but he was surprised at the interest the teachers paid his work.

"The art teacher had me come up and do some drawings," he said. "And then she sent a note home to my parents saying she thought I should take art lessons."

Art, he explained, was part of the school curriculum, but what the teacher was suggesting was that he join a class of gifted students which met on Saturday mornings.

Mr. Barritt transferred to Saltus, where his art progressed. A couple years later, however, his parents offered him the chance to follow a cousin's footsteps and study art in Canada ? at Mount Allison Academy.

"He'd taken some art courses at (Mount Allison University while studying there," Mr. Barritt reminisced. "They asked me if I'd like to do that and I gave it a shot. This was in 1943."

He entered grade ten, but was simultaneously enrolled in additional drawing and painting classes at Mount Allison University.

The understanding was that at the completion of grade 12, Mr. Barritt would return to Bermuda and join the family's drinks' bottling business, John Barritt & Son Ltd. "As it happens, that year two new professors came in to take over the art gallery and fine arts school at Mount Allison University and they encouraged me to take the full fine arts course. They seemed to think I had talent," he smiled. "They wrote to my parents to see if they would support me in that and they did. So I went back and completed a four-year degree in fine arts."

Mr. Barritt admitted that his parents' recognition of arts as a discipline was unusual for that time period, but said: "They had always encouraged me in my arts, since I was back at Mount St. Agnes."

The four years were not solely devoted to artistic study. Mr. Barritt was also a talented athlete, skilled in rugby, basketball and water polo.

"You don't get many athletic artists," he joked. "I was an unusual sort."

The combination of talents led to an interesting prospect in his final year of study in 1950.

"One day, strangely, my professor became really excited," he said. "He said he'd just had a telephone call from (the boys' boarding school) Upper Canada College, wanting to know if they had a graduate there that could teach art and also coach sports. He came running to me and said, 'This is just right for you'."

In his early twenties at the time, Mr. Barritt said he wasn't sure, but that he would talk it over with his parents when they came up for his graduation ceremony.

"They really wanted me to come back and join the business," he said. "My father, Fred, was getting on, and my brother, Leon, who was managing the company, needed help ? and for some reason they thought I could give it to him."

the new challenge, Mr. Barritt's painting ? always in oils ? flourished and he began exhibiting his works. Praised widely ? are his renderings of the Theatre Boycott of 1959 and the Pembroke dump, painted a year later.

"I did a fair amount of painting," he said. "Although I was largely involved in the business I was doing quite a bit on the side and then, in 1962, my brother Leon had a severe brain haemorrhage and was completely paralysed. So I became the chief cook and bottle washer overnight. It wasn't that I wanted to be, but that's the way life is sometimes.

"My art went on the backburner. We'd just made a heavy investment (in the present John Barritt & Son location) on Verdmont Road, so I had a lot on my plate. But as it worked out, I had a lot of good help around me. We really had some tough times but we managed to get through them."

Mr. Barritt said it was just as he reached a point where he felt he could return to his art, that politics called. He ran as a United Bermuda Party (UBP) candidate in Pembroke East Central. In 1985 he was elected into the House of Parliament (along with current Mayor of Hamilton Lawson Mapp) and became the island's Cultural & Community Affairs Minister; later, he became a UBP Senator.

"By (the time I joined politics) I had people in the organisation who were competent in running the business," he said. "One of the secrets I learned was that one person can't do everything. The secret is to get people around you who can 'do' and then give them all the help you can. It's best to keep your finger on it that way.

"I think it was good, me recognising that I didn't have the ability to run that place by myself. My brother, Leon, like my father, like my grandfather ? they all were in the business when they were in their teens.

"My other brothers, Howard and Johnny, were both the same way. They had to leave school and get out and work. Because that's the way things were in those days. I was the lucky one in the family because I was the only one who got to go away to school."

Barritt said he never resumed his artwork. Now absent from politics and retired from business, he admits now would be as good a time to do so as any. However, he is appreciative of the fact that others remember and admire his works.

Last year, the Bermuda Society of Arts asked that he participate in the Past Presidents' exhibit the group held. As well, Bermuda National Gallery curator David Mitchell requested he be able to display one of Mr. Barritt's works as part of a landscape exhibit.

"I was amazed at the reaction from people, particularly from the ? I call them young ? artists now around," he said, admitting to being particularly amused when a young artist approached him, having viewed his work.

Laughed Mr. Barritt: "He said to me, 'You painted those? Back then?' It really gave me a lift.

"David Mitchell wanted to use The Dump painting as sort of a shock treatment of landscape. I don't particularly like art openings, but I went and somebody came and said how there was a young lady who wanted to meet the artist.

"She was a young, black lady - I later found out that she was an American but works here. She looked at me and said, 'You painted this? I was expecting to meet a black man'."

The exhibit now on at the Bermuda National Gallery is especially pleasing because it also pays tribute to Charles Lloyd Tucker. Before his death in 1971, that artist and Mr. Barritt were close friends.

"I was amazed really when (gallery director) Laura Gorham called me and said, 'We'd like to honour you and Charles'. I thought it was kind of sweet. I was close to Charles. We used to have so much fun talking ? about art, about people, about what was going on. He got married late in life and he asked me to be the best man; I was godfather to his son."

For its part, the Bermuda National Gallery was pleased to showcase their work.

"We are delighted . . . to be able to pay tribute to Robert Barritt and Charles Lloyd Tucker," said Ms Gorham. "The importance of these two highly talented and influential Bermudians has perhaps been under-appreciated in recent years and we hope these exhibitions will earn them the fresh appraisal and recognition they deserve from both an artistic and historical perspective."

Although categorised with Mr. Tucker as being among the first of Bermuda's modernist painters, Mr. Barritt said he wasn't sure the description was an apt fit for his style of work: "That's such a broad term really. It covers a multitude of sins."

What cannot be denied is the role Mr. Barritt and Mr. Tucker played in establishing the island's first racially-mixed art body.

s described by the Bermuda National Gallery: "They were among the artists featured in the seminal modern art exhibition held at the Freemasons Hall on Reid Street in 1959, which in turn led to the formation of the Bermuda Society of Arts, the island's first racially-mixed are body. It was the period of the Theatre Boycott, the breakdown of racial segregation and greater freedom of speech and the art of Barritt, Tucker and others reflected these changes."

Asked this week why he chose to paint what, for a white Bermudian at that time were taboo subjects ? race and politics ? Mr. Barritt explained it was because they came naturally to him.

"I'd always worked (at John Barritt & Son Ltd.)," he said. "Even when I was going to school I would work there during the summers. I'd always be on the back of a truck. I knew all of Bermuda ? the 'Back of Town', St. George's, St. David's, everywhere ? and I've always been very comfortable with that.

"But why do I paint that? I guess because that's what I am. That's the only way I can describe it. It comes very natural to me. I love Bermuda and her people. They're very special. I wish I had painted more.

"I've always been very critical that we cannot trace Bermuda's history, as far as her people are concerned, through the times. In most countries you can and I have to take a slap on the wrist for that.

"I could have been influencing a lot of young Bermudians to paint this way, to think this way. Most of them have come up looking at pink cottages and beaches, water ? it's just not in my nature to want to paint that way. The last thing I want to do is go and paint a landscape."

One part of Bermuda's history he regrets not having documented, is the Progressive Labour Party's rise to Government in 1998.

"I think that was an historical moment," he said. "There's a lot of things within that first victory that should be recorded."

A handful of Mr. Barritt's paintings and some of his sketch books will remain on display at the Bermuda National Gallery through April. That the main pieces are all from his past is something that's much lamented by the artist.

"The problem is that you get involved in so much that you don't get a chance to get into (painting)," he said. "Today I shake my head. I don't know why I don't do more than sketch things I would some day love to paint. Particularly now, I've got nothing to stop me. God knows I've got enough people on my case telling me to do it.

"Gombeys, I'm fascinated by them. I remember when I was a kid I loved to see them but I used to run from them. In those days, they would come up on the property and my father used to give them drinks.

"I would take off inside, but still watch them from the windows. It was amazing how they would move and the crowd would follow. There'd be no traffic and they would just cover the road. If you were behind them, all you could see of the gombeys over the crowd was their peacock feathers; that, and the crowd moving with the music. Now how do you put that on canvas?"

The Bermuda National Gallery's Winter Exhibitions open to the public today, and continue through April 8.

The Main Gallery is devoted to the work of Japanese woodblock artist Yoshitoshi. The Lower Mezzanine features the tributes to Mr. Barritt and Mr. Tucker. The winter line-up is rounded out by selections from the Bermuda National Gallery's acclaimed Bermuda, African and European Collections.

The Bermuda National Gallery is open Monday through Saturday, 10 a.m. through 4 p.m. Admission is free.