Clementine Hunter

Clementine Hunter (1887-1988) rose from a cotton-picker on Central Louisiana's historic Melrose Plantation to a famed folk art painter of Southern plantation life.

Hunter's art is celebrated nationally for her visual history of singular events of American plantation life in the early 1900's. A self-taught artist, Hunter painted from memory scenes of cotton picking, pecan harvesting, washdays, river baptisms, weddings, funerals and Saturday night revelry. More than a personal record of Hunter's life, her paintings also reflect the social, material, and cultural aspects of the Cane River region's larger African American community during the early to mid-1900s. Today, her work can be viewed in many of our nation's most esteemed museums, including the Smithsonian Institute, New York's Museum of American Folk Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art and the Dallas Museum of Fine Arts.