At Melrose Plantation, Clementine (pronounced Clementeen) Hunter swirled leftover oil paints and turpentine by the light of a kerosene lamp, applying colors to a canvas window shade she pulled down to paint on.
Hunter (1886/87 – 1988), a self-taught Black Creole artist, mother, and farm laborer from Louisiana, did not start painting until her late fifties. At night, after long days spent with laundry or field labor, she used her talent to recount the communal and spiritual experiences of Black families in Natchitoches Parish.
Unlike academically trained artists who might use fruit bowls or posed figures as subjects, Hunter was a memory painter. Every scene she painted came directly from her mind.
“The only thing I can paint is just what crosses my mind. I don’t want to paint what everyone has already painted. I want to paint something that nobody has.”
In Baptism, Hunter painted one of the many community events she celebrated with her neighbors. Baptism candidates (in green) march from St. Augustine Catholic Church down to the Cane River, a favorite landmark in Hunter’s paintings. In fact, the very first of her paintings depicts a similar scene.
Like many self-taught artists, Clementine Hunter was less concerned about the traditional rules of art like perspective and scale. Her figures vary in size according to importance in Baptism. The largest figures, the Baptismal candidates (green) and clergymen (yellow), catch the eye first. Rather than using shading, Hunter’s colors are flat and bold, enlivening her memory paintings.
One of Hunter’s repeated motifs was of Black women as caring, strong individuals who could hold communities together. Hunter described herself harvesting 78 pounds of cotton one morning, taking a break to call a midwife and give birth, and returning to work a few days later.
Despite being confined to painting around her heavy work schedule, Hunter was vastly prolific, producing around 5,000-10,000 paintings before her death at age 101. She utilized the materials around her, painting on gourds, wine bottles, and even milk bottles when she could not find a canvas.
Hunter was the grandchild of the enslaved laborers who built Melrose Plantation. During her time, the site functioned as an artist colony. Visiting painters left materials which Hunter would later pick up herself, but her art practice began much earlier with her story quilts, which used fabric patterns and pictures to tell family history. Hunter only began painting folk scenes and autobiographical narratives in the 1940s.
The New Orleans Museum of Art (then the Delgado Museum) exhibited her work in 1955, making her the first Black artist to have work displayed in the museum. However, Hunter was not allowed to attend her own exhibition, instead forced to slip in after hours. Later, President Jimmy Carter would invite her to the White House — an offer she countered with a request that he come visit her.
Today, museums across the United States collect her critically acclaimed paintings. In 2018, Crystal Bridges acquired one of her works, which had traveled from a private owner in New Orleans to another in LA, and from there to Northwest Arkansas.
While Hunter certainly saw herself as an artist and received growing acclaim within her lifetime, her practice was never about fame or fortune. She was interested in recording and paying homage to lives and traditions which rarely received attention in the art and museums of her day. She spent the rest of her life on or near Melrose, painting up until a few days before her death.
“When the Lord give it [the gift] to me, He didn’t say rich, and He didn’t say sell. He just give it to me.”