![]() Hunter's children were named Agnes, King, and Mary, although she called Mary "Jackie". The two lived together in a workers' cabin at Melrose Plantation and had five children, although two were stillborn. Until Clementine Hunter married Emmanuel, she spoke only Creole French, and he taught her American English. In 1924, Clementine married Emmanuel Hunter, a Creole woodchopper at Melrose six years her senior. Charles Dupree and Clementine Hunter never married, and Dupree died in 1914. Their second child, Cora, was born a few years later. Charles is rumored to have built a steam engine with having only seen a picture and was well known for his highly skilled labor. Hunter's first partner was Charles Dupree, a Creole man about fifteen years Hunter's senior. When Hunter was about twenty in 1907, she give birth to her first child, Joseph Dupree, called Frenchie. Her mother, Mary Antoinette Reuben, died in 1905 at Melrose. While in her teens, Hunter took informal classes at night with other workers at Melrose Plantation. In the fall, she would also harvest pecans, working six days a week for months of the year. Hunter also worked for a wage as an agricultural laborer, harvesting 150 to 200 pounds of cotton a day, making 75 cents. ![]() Hunter's father, Janvier "John" Reuben was hired as a wage laborer by John H. In 1902, around the age of fifteen, Hunter moved to Melrose Plantation. At certain points she lived in Robeline, Cypress, and Alexandria. Throughout her life she moved around in the Cane River Valley while her father looked for work. Hunter began working in the fields at eight years old, picking cotton alongside her father. She attended school for less than a year, and never formally learned to read or write. The school was segregated and enforced harsh rules, which Hunter cited as the reason she left school at a young age. Hunter moved at Cloutierville when she was around five years old and sent to St. Her family called her by the nickname Tébé, the French for "little baby," a nickname she carried into adulthood. 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. Although her exact date of birth is unknown, she said she was born around Christmas. She was baptized a Catholic on March 19, 1887, in Cloutierville, and it is known that she was about three months old. Her parents were married on October 15, 1890, in Cloutierville at the town's Catholic church, St. Hunter knew her paternal grandmother well, a Black and Native American woman who she called MéMé (pronounced May–May). 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. Her maternal grandfather was called Billy Zack Adams. Hunter's maternal grandmother Idole, an enslaved Black and Native American woman, was born in Virginia and brought to Louisiana. Hunter's siblings were named Maria, Ida, Rosa, Edward, Simon, and John. She was the first of seven children born to Janvier Reuben (though Clementine Hunter called him John ) and Mary Antoinette Adams. ![]() Mural (detail)Ĭlementine Hunter was born in late December 1886 or early January 1887 at Hidden Hill Plantation, near Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. 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. 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. Clementine Hunter produced an estimated 5,000 to 10,000 paintings in her lifetime. But by the end of her life, her work was being exhibited in museums and sold by dealers for thousands of dollars. Initially she sold her first paintings for as little as 25 cents. 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. She started working as a farm laborer when young, and never learned to read or write. Hunter was born into a Louisiana Creole family at Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, in Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. 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. ![]()
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