Clementine Hunter Saturday Night at the Honky Tonk Oval Platter

Louisiana’s most famous artist, Clementine Hunter, was born in 1886 at Hidden Hill Plantation below Cloutierville, Louisiana. At a young age, Clementine moved to Melrose Plantation where she lived and worked until her death in 1988 at age 101.  It was here that she came in contact with New Orleans artist Alberta Kinsley, whose work inspired Clementine to try painting. Without formal training, she produced colorful memory paintings that captured every day life on Melrose Plantation. Her paintings are recognized as a narrative telling the story of plantation life during the time before mechanization came to agriculture. Her depiction of cotton pickings, washdays, pecan pickings, weddings, baptisms, funerals and other scenes of life on Melrose, have made her works coveted around the world. Clementine Hunter is one of the most important self-taught American artists of the 20th century. Her works can be seen in the Smithsonian Institution, The American Folk Art Museum, The Oprah Winfrey Collection in Chicago and countless other museums and private collections.