Clementine Hunter

Renowned for her immediately recognizable painterly style and her frank, economical descriptions of everyday African American plantation life in Louisiana, Clementine Hunter ranks as one of the American South’s most beloved vernacular artists. A lifelong resident of rural central Louisiana, Hunter was born in either 1886 or 1887––little more than two decades after the end of the Civil War––on an isolated cotton plantation near Cloutierville, where the brutal conditions had not changed appreciably for African-American sharecroppers after a violent Reconstruction period. When she was a child, her family moved to the nearby Melrose plantation in the Cane River region outside Natchitoches, where she remained for much of her life. In the 1920s, after enduring many years of picking and chopping in Melrose’s vast cotton, corn, and sugar fields, Hunter was assigned a domestic position in the kitchen of the big house. It was there that she first nurtured her creative impulses by quilting and making dolls for the white children and lace and baskets for their parents. In the 1940s, Francois Mignon, a white employee and resident of the plantation, recognized Hunter’s adept domestic artistry and encouraged her to paint.

—Brendan Greaves

Above: Clementine Hunter, in her cabin with Bowl of Zinnias, her first oil painting; published in Look Magazine, June 16, 1953. Photo by Clarence John Laughlin.

African-American Artists 1880–1987, Selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection. Seattle: University of Washington Press and the Smithsonian Institution Press, 1989.

 

American Folk Art, A Loan Exhibition 1730–1968. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University/Anglo-American Art Museum, 1968.

 

Art in the American South 1733–1989: Selections from the Roger Houston Ogden Collection. Lafayette, LA: University Art Museum, 1993.

 

Artists of the Black Experience. Chicago: University of Illinois at Chicago Circle, 1984.

 

Bailey, Mildred Hart. Audiotaped interview with Clementine Hunter. Mildred Hart Bailey Collection, Archives and Special Collections, Cammie G. Henry Research Center, Eugene P. Watson Memorial Library, Northwestern State University, Natchitoches, LA.

 

Baliey, Mildred Hart. “Painted Memories of a Slave’s Daughter.” Modern Maturity (October 1981): 42–44

 

Bearden, Romare and Harry Henderson. A History of African American Artists from 1792 to the Present. New York: Pantheon, 1993.

 

Blasdel, Gregg N. Symbols and Images: Contemporary Primitive Artists. New York: American Federation of the Arts, 1970.

 

A Centennial Salute to Clementine Hunter. New Orleans, LA: New Orleans Museum of Art, 1985.

 

”Clementine Hunter.” Folk Art Finder 2, no. 2 & 3 (May 1981): 14, 33.

 

“Clementine Hunter (1887–1988).” Folk Art Finder 9, no. 2 (April 1988): 2.

 

Clementine Hunter: American Folk Artist—A Retrospective Exhibition. Dallas: Museum of African-American Life & Culture, 1993.

 

Contemporary American Folk, Naïve, and Outsider Art: Into the Mainstream? Oxford, OH: Miami University Art Museum, 1990.

 

Crown, Carol, ed. Coming Home! Self-Taught Artists, the Bible and the American South. Jackson, MS: Art Museum of the University of Memphis in association with the University Press of Mississippi, 2004.

 

Crown, Carol and Charles Russell, eds. Sacred and Profane: Voice and Vision in Southern Self-Taught Art. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2007.

 

Delehanty, Randolph. Art in the American South: Works from the Ogden Collection. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1996.

 

Driskell, David C. Two Centuries of Black American Art. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1976.

 

Enisled Visions: The Southern Non-Traditional Folk Artist. Mobile, AL: Fine Arts Museum of the South, 1987.

 

Forever Free: Art by African American Women 1862–1980. College Park, MD: University of Maryland, 1981.

 

Gilley, Shelby R. Painting by Heart: The Life and Work of Clementine Hunter, Louisiana Folk Artist. Baton Rouge: St. Emma Press, 2000.

 

The Harmon and Harriet Kelley Collection of African American Art. San Antonio, TX: San Antonio Museum of Art, 1994.

 

Hemphill, Herbert W., Jr., and Julia Weissman. Twentieth-Century American Folk Art and Artists. New York: E. P. Dutton & Co., Inc., 1974.

 

Hill, Ruth Edmonds, ed. The Black Women Oral History Project: from the Arthur and Elizabeth Schlesinger Library of the History of Women in America, Radcliffe College. (vol. 6) Westport and London: Meckler, 1991.

 

Keeping the Faith: An Exhibition of Religious Folk Art. St Louis, MO: Center of Contemporary Art, 1999.

 

Let It Shine: Self-Taught Art from the T. Marshall Hahn Collection. Atlanta, GA: High Museum of Art, in association with the University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, MS, 2001.

 

Lieberman, Laura C. “The Southern Artist: Clementine Hunter.” Southern Accents (August 1987): n.a.

 

Louisiana Folk Paintings: Bruce Brice, Clementine Hunter, Sister Gertrude Morgan: the Museum of American Folk Art, September 17–November 4, 1973, New York City. New York, NY: Museum of American Folk Art, 1973

 

Maresca, Frank, and Roger Ricco. American Self-Taught: Paintings and Drawings by Outsider Artists. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.

 

Miller, Herschel. “Clementine Hunter—American Primitive.” New Orleans Magazine (December 1968): n.a.

 

Morris, Steven. “Primitive Art of Clementine Hunter.” Ebony (May 1969): 144–148.

 

Out of the Boot: Self-Taught Louisiana Afro-American Artists. Los Angeles, CA: Afro-American Museum, 1989.

 

Outside the Mainstream: Folk Art in Our Time. Atlanta: High Museum of Art, 1988.

 

“Outside USA II.” Kunstforum, no. 113 (May 1991).

 

Perry, Regenia A. What It Is: Black American Folk Art from the Collection of Regenia Perry. Richmond, VA: Virginia Commonwealth University, 1982.

 

Personal Intensity: Artists in Spite of the Mainstream. Milwaukee: Art Museum, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee, 1991.

 

Rambling on My Mind: Black Folk Art of the Southwest. Dallas: Museum of African-American Life and Culture, 1987.

 

Russell, Charles, ed. Self-Taught Art: The Culture and Aesthetics of American Vernacular Art. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2001.

 

Selected Works from the Permanent Collection of American Folk Art. Orlando, FL: The Mennello Museum, 1999.

 

Souls Grown Deep: African American Vernacular Art from the South, Volume 1, edited by William Arnett and Paul Arnett. Atlanta, Georgia: Tinwood Books in association with Schomburg Center for Research in Black Cultures, New York, 2000.

 

Southern Works on Paper, 1900–1950. Atlanta: Southern Arts Federation, 1981.

 

Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 1983.

 

A Time to Reap: Late-Blooming Folk Artists. South Orange, NJ: Seton Hall University/Museum of American Folk Art, 1985.

 

Trechsel, Gail Andrews, ed. Pictured in My Mind: Contemporary American Self-taught Art from the Collection of Kurt Gitter and Alice Rae-Yelen. Birmingham, AL: Birmingham Museum of Art, in association with University Press of Mississippi, 1995.

 

Tree of Life: The Inaugural Exhibition of the American Visionary Art Museum. Baltimore: American Visionary Art Museum, 1996.

 

Wilson, Charles R., and William Ferris. Encyclopedia of Southern Culture. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1989.

 

Wilson, James L. Clementine Hunter: American Folk Artist. Gretna: Pelican Publishing Company, 1988.

 

Yelen, Alice Rae. Passionate Visions of the American South: Self-Taught Artists from 1940 to the Present. New Orleans: New Orleans Museum of Art in association with University Press of Mississippi, Jackson, 1994.