untitled (scenes of life), Clementine Hunter

Episode 251 May-2006, revised Jan-2012, Emily Stamey (revision of Episode 70) I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. A lively untitled painting by the Louisiana artist Clementine [Clementeen] Hunter pictures African-American life in the rural south. Arranged in horizontal bands across the brightly colored composition and depicted in a simplified style, multiple figures perform various activities such as attending a baptism, washing laundry, and picking cotton. Hunter knew these scenes well. Born at the close of the nineteenth century, she lived nearly her entire life on a plantation.There she worked as a cotton picker and domestic servant, raised five children, cared for her dying husband, and, at age fifty, taught herself to paint. This artistic turn of events occurred when Hunter was sent to clean up after an artist visitor. Discovering discarded paints in the guest’s room, she salvaged these materials and created her first work. As she did for the painting in the Spencer, Hunter used an old window shade for her canvas. Clementine Hunter repeatedly created these scenes of daily life until she died, one of Louisiana’s most famous artists, at the age of 101. With thanks to Emily Stamey for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.

Why did the artist paint this way? Clementine Hunter, the artist of this untitled painting, was never formally trained as an artist and did not start painting until she was in her 50s. As a self-taught artist, Hunter often painted scenes of her daily life in the naïve style as you see in this painting.