Collection: Philomé Obin (Cap-Haitian, 1891-1986)

Philomé Obin (1891-1986) was born in Cap-Haïtien, Haiti, and is one of the great Haitian masters. He is recognized as the father of the Cap-Haïtien school. A self-taught painter, he joined the Centre d’Art shortly after its founding in 1944. His precise, linear compositions of daily life, street scenes, and Haiti’s colonial history became the foundation for generations of northern Haitian painters. His two murals for the Episcopal Cathedral of Sainte Trinité in Port-au-Prince were destroyed in the January 12, 2010 earthquake. His paintings are held by the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Figge Art Museum in Davenport, Iowa, and have sold at Sotheby’s and Christie’s. Jacqueline Kennedy  Onassis traveled to Cap-Haïtien specifically to see his work. Alongside Hector Hyppolite, Obin is considered one of the earliest and most influential Haitian masters and founders of Haitian painting. As Gérald Alexis notes in Peintres Haïtiens, “Obin’s concern with precision and the respect of reality injects a measure of coldness into his narrative works.”