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 paintings in her lifetime. Hunter was granted an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degree by Northwestern State University of Louisiana in 1986, and she is the first African-American artist to have a solo exhibition at the present-day New Orleans Museum of Art. In 2013, director Robert Wilson presented a new opera about her, entitled Zinnias: the Life of Clementine Hunter, at Montclair State University in New Jersey.
Early life
Clementine Hunter was born in late December 1886 or early January 1887 at Hidden Hill Plantation, near Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. She was the first of seven children born to Janvier Reuben (though Clementine Hunter called him John) and Mary Antoinette Adams. Hunter's siblings were named Maria, Ida, Rosa, Edward, Simon, and John. Hunter's maternal grandmother Idole, an enslaved Black and Native American woman, was born in Virginia and brought to Louisiana. Her maternal grandfather was called Billy Zack Adams. Hunter's paternal grandfather, who was of mixed African, French, and Irish descent, traded horses during the Civil War, but died before she was born. Hunter knew her paternal grandmother well, a Black and Native American woman who she called MéMé (pronounced May–May). Her parents were married on October 15, 1890, in Cloutierville at the town's Catholic church, St. John the Baptist.
She was baptized a Catholic on March 19, 1887, in Cloutierville, and it is known that she was about three months old. Although her exact date of birth is unknown, she said she was born around Christmas. She went by the name Clémence for the first part of her life, was baptized Clementiam and changed her name to Clementine after moving to Melrose Plantation. Her family called her by the nickname Tébé, the French for "little baby," a nickname she carried into adulthood.
Hunter moved at Cloutierville when she was around five years old and sent to St. John the Baptist Catholic Church School. The school was segregated and enforced harsh rules, which Hunter cited as the reason she left school at a young age. She attended school for less than a year, and never formally learned to read or write. Hunter began working in the fields at eight years old, picking cotton alongside her father. Throughout her life she moved around in the Cane River Valley while her father looked for work. At certain points she lived in Robeline, Cypress, and Alexandria. In 1902, around the age of fifteen, Hunter moved to Melrose Plantation.
Hunter's father, Janvier "John" Reuben was hired as a wage laborer by John H. Henry, the current owner of Melrose. Hunter also worked for a wage as an agricultural laborer, harvesting 150 to 200 pounds of cotton a day, making 75 cents. In the fall, she would also harvest pecans, working six days a week for months of the year. While in her teens, Hunter took informal classes at night with other workers at Melrose Plantation. Her mother, Mary Antoinette Reuben, died in 1905 at Melrose.
When Hunter was about twenty in 1907, she give birth to her first child, Joseph Dupree, called Frenchie. Hunter's first partner was Charles Dupree, a Creole man about fifteen years Hunter's senior. Charles is rumored to have built a steam engine with having only seen a picture and was well known for his highly skilled labor. Their second child, Cora, was born a few years later. Charles Dupree and Clementine Hunter never married, and Dupree died in 1914.