Tom Whitehead
The first time I Met Clementine Hunter was in the spring of 1966. Ora Williams, an English teacher at Northwestern State University in Natchitoches and the supervisor of my student worker’s job in the television studio, invited me to go with her and an international student from Taiwan out to Melrose Plantation.
We first stopped at Clementine’s small cabin located across the road from Melrose. I met the artist and bought my first painting for three dollars, a bowl of zinnias. Then we drove around to Melrose and visited François on the porch of Yucca House. Little could I have imagined how the events of that simple afternoon trip would shape the next forty years of my life.
Before graduating in the spring of 1967, I made several more trips out to see Clementine and bought two more paintings. Those three paintings and the awe of this petite, aged black lady painting around a potbelly stove intrigued me. When I returned to teach at Northwestern State in July 1969, a weekly odyssey began that lasted from that visit to Hunter’s cabin through three more moves the artist made over the next eighteen years.
The last time I visited her was in early December 1987, prior to departing on a three-week trip to England and Africa. It was on that trip I got word in early January 1988 that Clementine had died. My father called me in Mombasa, Kenya, to tell me, “Your friend has died.” Within an hour I picked up the International Herald Tribune, and from where I was, half a world away, I read her obituary.
My story of a close friendship with Clementine Hunter and life in the historic community of Natchitoches and Cane River stretches the imagination. I have inherited the mantle of being the “Hunter Authority” after so many others who held this honor have passed away. I had never thought of my stewardship role until the past few years and now see an expanded obligation to document and protect Clementine Hunter’s story and her work.
The list is long of those who proceed me: Alberta Kinsey, François Mignon, James Register, Carolyn Ramsey, Clarence John Laughlin, Dr. Bob Ryan, “dede” Bailey, Ann Brittain, and Shelby Gilley. Some played larger roles than others, but all of us valued the work and life of Clementine Hunter. Some of us acquired impressive Hunter collections, but few, if any, ever made great sums of money from paintings. Most collections have been handed down in families or donated to museums. Shelby Gilley was the only commercial dealer, and he often ended up keeping the best pieces for his personal collection.
We supplied the artist with paint, boards, and brushes, and she produced art. I can honestly say I don’t think Clementine ever bought art supplies. The tradition began with the Louisiana artist Alberta Kinsey, who first gave her leftover paints to Clementine. With the dabs of color from Kinsey’s used paint tubes, Clementine searched and found cardboard and boards around the house, and she began to paint. Mignon and Register were the first to recognize her talent, and they encouraged and supported her early efforts. All of us through the years delivered supplies, and Clementine Hunter delivered art.
Bailey, Brittain, and I always paid whatever the artist asked for her pictures. I think everyone sold a piece or two to friends or folks that wanted a Hunter, but any “profit” went back into art supplies. I decided a few years ago that I would not buy or sell Clementine Hunter’s art. On the occasion of my death my extensive collection will pass to museums for the entire world to see and enjoy in the years ahead.
For me Clementine’s story is more than pictures on boards; it is the story of the most remarkable person I ever met. She was blessed with an innate brightness beyond what could be taught in a classroom. Her art is filled with examples of her wit and talent. She was not educated, she never traveled, she never had an art lesson, but Clementine Hunter taught me much. I learned from her that intelligence, wit, and talent arise sometimes from the least likely among us.
Her works inspire others in ways no one could have imagined when this all started at Melrose in the late 1930s. I recently proofread a chapter on Clementine in a new elementary math textbook that uses the works of modern artists in teaching math skills. Paintings by Picasso, Matisse, O’Keeffe, Warhol, Lichtenstein, and other modern masters are there alongside a Hunter church scene. An ensemble musical company tours nationally each spring featuring the story of four African American women, and one is Clementine. Photographer Bruce Weber selected Hunter and her paintings as the cover for one of his annual All-American magazines. The movie musical Camp has an elaborate production number with the song “Century Plant.” The first lyric is about Clementine Hunter starting to paint after age fifty. Scholars and students often contact me for information about Clementine when they are writing and researching papers.
Inspired by Hunter’s African House Murals, English composer Martin Ellerby composed a concerto for woodwinds and brass that premiered in Natchitoches in the spring of 2011. His remarkable piece was commissioned by and dedicated to the hundredth anniversary of the Northwestern State Band. Ellerby said he was drawn to the rhythm of Hunter’s images. “They seem to come alive in celebration of dance and color, but also encompass a darker and more spiritual truth that their initial innocence somewhat shrouds,” he said. I sat in the audience that Sunday afternoon listening to Ellerby’s composition and recalling my friend the artist. I was so proud for her. She has become an inspiration for so many and in so many ways.
The American avant-garde stage producer/director Robert Wilson conceived an opera based on Clementine’s life. An opera! Zinnias: The Life of Clementine Hunter, with music by Dr. Bernice Johnson Reagon and her daughter Toshi Reagon, resulted from Wilson’s visits to Melrose as an eleven-year-old child. Hanging today in his collection is the painting he bought from the artist in 1952 for twenty-five cents. Wilson’s plans for the opera include a premiere in the winter of 2013, with plans for performances at prestigious venues around the word.
If only Mignon, Register, Bailey, and the others were alive to see and hear that twenty-five years after Clementine’s death, her story is still being told. And if Clementine were here, well, she would have been absolutely unimpressed by all the recognition and fame.
I am reminded of the time Mary Johnston, the wife of the former Louisiana senator J. Bennett Johnston, arranged for Clementine to fly to Washington, D.C., to meet president Jimmy Carter. When Clementine was told about the trip, she studied the idea for a moment then said, “If Jimmy Carter wants to see me, he knows where I am.” That was the Clementine I knew.
The quest to prevent and stop forgeries of her work has grown into what I consider an obligation to the memory and integrity of the artist. While she was alive, there were some fakes being done of her paintings, but since her death the market has seen hundreds of paintings by several other forgers appear. More writing and exposure is needed to make it easier for collectors and authorities to discern a fake and cease the duping of innocent people trying to acquire an original Clementine Hunter painting.
We offer this book as a comprehensive source of what is known about the life and art of Clementine Hunter. From my personal files I have indexed documents, letters, audio, video, and paintings, all of which will someday become publicly accessible. My records, as well as those from libraries and interviews, make this book the most researched effort yet for collectors, scholars, and those who just wish to read a true and treasured American story about my friend Clementine Hunter.