![]() Shortly after Clementine’s birth, her family began seeking work elsewhere, in hopes of getting away from the degraded conditions at Hidden Hill.Īmidst the moving around, Clementine had a brief experience of the late 19th century education system in the South. At five years old, she attended school for the first time, and found a segregated, cruel environment that, though promising the virtues of literacy, would insist on her complacency in a social structure that derided her humanity. A price she was unwilling to pay, she fled the school most days to join her father working in the cotton fields, and by the end of that first school year, her parents decided to keep her with them. Clementine never learned to read or write, but exchanged that opportunity to be in community with the people she loved. Even though the labor was back-breaking, she described her experiences in the cotton fields or harvesting pecans as joyful and happy.Īt the age of fifteen, Clementine moved with her family to the place she would live in and around for the rest of her life, the place where she would find love, raise her children, and be supported in her passion for painting: Melrose Plantation. Likely drawn by the promise of tolerable working conditions, her parents went into the employ of John and Cammie Henry shortly after the turn of the century. Clementine joined them, again working the cotton fields and harvesting pecans. ![]() Slavery was fresh in the minds of everyone in the South, and conditions were wretchedly poor for farm laborers. They were French Creole: of African, Irish, and French descent, and Clementine’s grandmothers on both sides had Native American ancestry. The paintings of Clementine Hunter depict an uncomplicated, organized world full of bright and lively individuals engaging in community activities. There is abundant foliage and flowers, often arranged along stacked horizon lines. The people, too, are put in careful order: walking in processions, dancing in couplets, gathered around a wash tub, equidistant throughout a cotton field. They’re like dolls arranged within a miniature land by a child expressing independent agency. In fact, her work is often considered childlike and innocent her heavy handed and immediate depictions thought to be little more than naïve nostalgia. Though her paintings have an obvious simplicity and an inherent optimism, when considering the social milieu in which she worked it becomes clear that the underlying impulse of her work is rather an act of resistance. The conditions of her upbringing, the lack of opportunities afforded to her, and even the circumstances that resulted in the opportunity for her to paint are all derivative of a hateful social order that she worked to fight against.Ĭlementine Hunter was born near Cloutierville, Louisiana around Christmas of 1886. She was the first of seven children, and her parents, Marie Antoinette Adams and Janvier (John) Reuben were French-speaking farmhands at the Hidden Hill Plantation, supposedly the site that inspired Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In rural central Louisiana on the banks of the Cane River sits Melrose Plantation. With roots that reach well beyond the beginnings of the European colonization of the region, Melrose has supported Native American tribes, early white and Creole farming communities, endured the violence of the Civil War, and later, acted as an artist's retreat. Early in its development by Westerners, an enigmatic structure was erected on the property, called the African House, that now stands as an unexpected symbol of cultural confluence and the validation of individual significance. Today, the upper floor of the building houses The African House Murals, the largest and most celebrated artworks of Clementine Hunter, who lived for the majority of her life on Melrose Plantation, and whose legacy of humble self-determination stands in direct relationship to that of the founders of the place we now call Melrose. This article will explore the work of Clementine Hunter by accounting for her life story, the history of her home, and assess the unique and definitive qualities of her painting.Ĭlementine Hunter is one of the South’s most celebrated folk artists, an untrained painter who began her career only after she’d reached her fifties. Unable to read or write, she shared her memories of life working in rural Louisiana by producing vibrant pictures.
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