Untitled Oil Painting
An untitled and undated primitive oil painting on board by self-taught artist Clementine Hunter (1887-1988), signed with the artist's monogram on the right edge of the painting. It depicts early 20th-century plantation workers socializing and relaxing.
Condition: very good. Housed in rustic wooden frame without glass. A Nantucket art gallery stamp on verso.
Dimensions
Painting: w 18 in x h 24 in
frame w 22 in x h 28 in.
1329786
Shelved Dupont Bookstore
Sold
NOTES
Hunter spent much of her life at Melrose Plantation near Natchitoches, Louisiana, and never traveled more than 100 miles from home. During the 1930s, Melrose Plantation became an artist and writer’s colony hosting such diverse talents as Richard Avedon, Lyle Saxon, Roark Bradford, Alexander Woollcott, Rose Franken and Gwen Bristow. In 1939, Hunter used the brushes and paint discarded by New Orleans artist Albert Kinsey to “mark a picture” on a window shade, beginning Hunter’s career as an artist. Hunter has become one of the most well-known self-taught artists, often referred to as the black Grandma Moses. She was the first African-American artist to have a solo exhibition at what is now the New Orleans Museum of Art. Painting from memory, she is credited as an important social and cultural historian for her documentation of early 20th-century plantation life. Her paintings depict workers picking cotton and pecans, washing clothes, as well as baptisms and funerals. Though many of Hunter’s paintings deal with similar subjects, each is unique. She is known for having painted on discarded items such as window shades, jugs, bottles, gourds and cardboard boxes.