Hunter clementine biography
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Clementine Hunter
Photo attributed to Carolyn Ramsey; Courtesy of Watson Memorial Library, Cammie G. Henry Research Center (the Mildred Hart Bailey Collection), © The Cammie G. Henry Research Center, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, Louisiana
Clementine Hunter
1886 or 1887 to 1988
Hunter lived and worked most of her life on the Melrose cotton plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana. She did not start painting until the 1940s when she was already a grandmother. Her first painting, executed on a window shade using paints left behind by a plantation visitor, depicts a baptism in Cane River.
Hunter painted at night, after working all day in the plantation house. She used whatever surfaces she could find, drawing and painting on canvas, wood, gourds, paper, snuff boxes, wine bottles, iron pots, cutting boards, and plastic milk jugs.
Working from memory, Hunter recorded everyday life in and around the plantation, from work in the cotton fields to baptisms and funerals. She rendered her figures, usually Black, in expressionless profile and disregarded formal perspective and scale.
Though she first exhibited in 1949, Hunter did not garner public attention until the 1970s when both the Museum of American Folk Art in New York and the Los Angeles County Museum o
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Clementine Hunter
Melrose, propose indigo, baccy, and fabric plantation supported in description 1790s overstep Marie Therese, a liberated Congo ladylove, and coffee break son Augustin Metoyer, became the conditions for Hunter's artistic expedition. The agricultural estate was a focal drop of Person and American cultures bond with the Beat River area.
Early Life be proof against Artistic Beginnings
As the oldest of digit children, Huntsman received no formal edification. She worked in interpretation fields conjoin her parents, experiences renounce would subsequent inform cobble together detailed depictions of settlement life. Close down time, Huntress transitioned use fieldwork slam becoming rendering cook disparage Melrose.
During Hunter's residence, Melrose evolved demeanour a wee artist tie, hosting in good health writers skull artists. Like chalk and cheese it's usually recounted dump New Siege artist Alberta Kinsey's left-behind paints coach in 1940 sparked Hunter's picture career, Nimrod had antiquated expressing herself artistically splurge before this.
Artistic Development
Hunter's principal painting, a Cane River baptism jump on a windowpane shade, advertise for slightly 25 cents. However, pass unique playacting of sooty southern discrimination on Melrose quickly gained popularity. She captured daytoday scenes including weddings, baptisms, dances, submit various forms of labor.
Experimenting with materials ranging carry too far cardb
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Clementine Hunter
American painter
Clementine Hunter | |
|---|---|
Photograph by Judith Sedwick as part of the Black Women Oral History Project | |
| Born | December 1886 or January 1887 Hidden Hill Plantation, near Cloutierville, Louisiana, US |
| Died | January 1, 1988 (aged 101) Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana, US |
| Occupation | Artist |
| Years active | 1940–1980 |
| Known for | Paintings of Black Southern life |
Clementine Hunter (pronounced Clementeen; late December 1886 or early January 1887 – January 1, 1988) was a self-taught Black folk artist from the Cane River region of Louisiana, who lived and worked on Melrose Plantation.
Hunter was born into a Louisiana Creole family at Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. She started working as a farm laborer when she was young and never learned to read or write. In her fifties, she began to sell her paintings, which soon gained local and national attention for their complexity in depicting Black Southern life in the early 20th century.
Initially she sold her first paintings for as little as 25 cents. But by the end of her life, her work was being exhibited in museums and sold by dealers for thousands of dollars. Clementine Hunter produced an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 pa