NEW YORK – Sometimes described as the Deep South’s version of Grandma Moses, Clementine Hunter (1886 or 1887-1988) took up painting late in life, in the 1940s, when she was a grandmother. By then, she had seen many changes, living under Jim Crow laws and with the prolonged aftermath of slavery in the South.
Hunter was born and raised on the Hidden Hill Plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana, and was the granddaughter of Creole people who had been enslaved. Hidden Hill is said to be the inspiration for the famed anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin, and it was later renamed Little Eva Plantation after a character in the book. At age 15, Hunter’s father was hired as a laborer at Melrose Plantation down the road. She followed him there to pick cotton, and saw that plantation devolve from a functional farming operation to surviving only by welcoming artists in residence.
Like many self-taught Southern folk artists, Hunter made her art with found materials. According to the National Museum for Women in the Arts, she rendered her first painting, depicting a baptism in the river, on a window shade with paints discarded by one of the Melrose Plantation artists. “She used whatever surfaces she could find, drawing and painting on canvas, wood, gourds, paper, snuff boxes, wine bottles, iron pots, cutting boards, and plastic milk jugs,” the museum’s website states.
Describing her as a memory painter, Steve Slotin, co-owner and operator of Slotin Folk Art Auction in Buford, Georgia, said Hunter portrayed the plantation and its rural setting and culture, which was fast disappearing. “She saw a whole different lifestyle than most people would ever have the opportunity to see – cotton picking, harvesting of pecans, the [river] baptisms, and the simple life of living in this rural existence,” Slotin said. “She documented it all and did it in a very pure and simple way that still resonates.” One such documentary work by Hunter is Doctor Comes A’ Callin’, recording an era when doctors would routinely make house calls to see patients. The circa-1940 oil on cardstock went for $15,000 plus the buyer’s premium in November 2020 at Slotin.
Hunter’s gift emerged when the Melrose Plantation curator-artist Francois Mignon gave her some art materials, and she returned the next morning with a finished painting. “He recognized it as her having a lot of talent and encouraged her to continue,” Slotin said. Her work improved after she received a steady stream of better materials, freeing her from scavenging nearly empty paint tubes from the artists’ trash. “That’s really how she got started,” he said.
Her fame truly spread when Look magazine ran a feature story on her in 1953 and the Delgado Museum (now known as the New Orleans Museum of Art) mounted a solo exhibit of her work in 1955, the first time a Louisiana museum did so for an African American artist. Segregation laws barred Hunter from seeing it during the museum’s public hours, however.
Neal Auction Company in New Orleans has witnessed a lot of interest in paintings by the Louisiana artist from collectors both near and far. “The market for Clementine Hunter’s work has been on an upward trajectory over the last few years, with new collectors continually joining the fray. Her works are consigned to us primarily from the South, but are increasingly going to collections both private and public nationwide,” said Marney N. Robinson, the firm’s director of fine art.
The top price on the LiveAuctioners platform for Clementine Hunter is Early Funeral, the aforementioned oil painting on a window shade laid on Masonite, which attained $70,000 plus the buyer’s premium in September 2021 at Neal Auction Company. “This work is a particularly early example from Hunter,” Robinson said. “It came from the estate of Iris Brittain Rayford, who amassed one of the most important collections of early Hunters seen to date.”
Clementine Hunter’s oeuvre draws its appeal from its subject matter and its honesty. “Entirely self-taught, she disregarded formal perspective and scale to create vibrant scenes that were both autobiographical and universal in many ways,” Robinson said. Hunter realized a vivid tableau of plantation activities in Woman Carrying Gourds, an oil on board that made $68,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Neal Auction Company in September 2021 and also came from the Iris Brittain Rayford collection.
“Collectors value genuineness, a strong quality in Hunter’s and many other self-taught artists’ works. I see collectors gravitating toward this rawness and also looking to strengthen their collections with works by women artists and those previously overlooked in the traditional canon,” Robinson said. “Hunter not only became a successful female Black artist, but her work also largely featured strong women undertaking the tasks of traditional country life.”
Slotin has watched the market for Hunter’s work soar to unprecedented heights. “It’s a little mind-blowing for us, because in the ‘80s we were trying to present her work to the public, and we were getting $1,000 to $2,000 for a painting,” he said. “Now you see them at $5,000, $10,000, $15,000, and $20,000, and the market has tightened up a bit as more collectors get in and there are fewer works available.”
He has also seen Hunter’s work attract the attention of art forgers. Bogus Hunters were prevalent enough in the late 2000s to prompt an FBI investigation. Robinson said her auction house defended itself against this grim fact by developing a relationship with Tom Whitehead, a longtime friend of the artist, to authenticate all Hunter paintings it offers. Among the works authenticated by Whitehead is an untitled Hunter painting of Melrose Plantation, her home as of her teenage years, which realized $18,000 plus the buyer’s premium in April 2024 at Swann Auction Galleries.
Hunter’s religious-themed works rank among her most sought-after subjects. Baptismal Procession, an oil on canvas board dating to 1950, sold for $17,000 plus the buyer’s premium at Auctions at Showplace in May 2023. The epitome of folk art, this energetic painting depicts people holding parasols outside a church while others gather in the river to be baptized. As is typical for Hunter, she paints her figures in bright colors.
Another of Hunter’s favorite things were zinnias, a flower that loves warm weather and blooms across the South. Uncle Tom & Eliza in Flower Garden, an oil on canvas panel seemingly teeming with zinnias, sold for $16,500 plus the buyer’s premium in April 2021 at Slotin.
Clementine Hunter was both an artist and an archivist, documenting a bygone era with clarity and color. Driven to capture visions of the life she knew, she shared her art with countless others who saw its power and its grace. Though it might look unstudied and even crude, the fundamental purity and the truth of her work shines forth and moves viewers, regardless of where and when they were born.