The Apple Paringc. 194512 1/2 x 16 " (31.8 x 40.6 cm)
Frame: 19 1/8 x 22 5/8 x 1 1/4 " (48.4 x 57.5 x 3.2 cm)Oil on paperGift of Mildred Hart Bailey and the Clementine Hunter Art Trust1996.1.11152806843Clementine HunterPaintingshttp://nodes.emuseum.com/BU1BGBAG/apis/emuseum/network/v1/vocabularies/termMaster26674MelroseMelroseUnited StatesLouisianaWorks on PaperMelroseObject information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information. To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgClementine Hunter was born on Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana, in late 1886 or early 1887. Her family moved to Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches when she was a teenager, and she began work as a fieldhand soon after. She had two children with her first husband, Charles Dupree, and five with her second husband, Emmanuel Hunter, a woodcutter. She made quilts, dolls, and baskets in her spare time, and in the 1920s, after she started doing domestic indoor work, she began to paint.
Melrose Plantation, where Hunter lived for much of her life, was a haven for artists. Encouraged by François Mignon, the plantation librarian, Hunter began to paint using oils discarded by an artist-in-residence. Hunter’s several thousand paintings chronicle work and recreational activities on the plantation as well as the spiritual beliefs and religious practices of her community.
In the rural South, African American yards and gardens are often an extension of the working kitchen. This work scene, sympathetically depicted, is presented on a flattened plane close to the picture surface. A comfortably seated woman is paring apples; she is almost as tall as the tree that protects her from the sun as she performs the common kitchen task. A child, seated on a stool and shaded by an umbrella on a post, hands apples to the parer from a basket. The single chimney and veranda-like porch of the plantation building on the left is common to African American vernacular architecture. It resembles Yucca House, the first residence on Melrose Plantation, erected between about 1795 and 1800. The signature “Clemence” was typical for the artist between 1945 and 1950; another set of personal initials was added to the painting around 1970.
Lee Kogan, "The Apple Paring," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 375.PAINTINGGod gave me the power. Sometimes I try to quit paintin’. I can’t. I can’t. —Clementine HunterClementine Hunter brought truth and dignity to the everyday activities of a rural southern agricultural lifestyle that was rapidly fading into history. In her largely matriarchal world, industrious women whose physical toil never ceases run the engine of life. When not engaged in washing, fishing, laundering, picking cotton, or food preparation, they function as the moral compass of their communities, attending church, a baptism, or a funeral. In Hunter’s art, women normalize life; men disrupt it, letting off steam by carousing on rowdy Saturday nights.Hunter was born into a Louisianan Creole family on Hidden Hill Plantation along the Cane River. Here the family continued the fieldwork of picking cotton and pecans that their enslaved grandparents had done. When she was a teenager, they moved to Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches. The owner, Cammie G. Henry, ran the historic Melrose as something of an artist’s colony situated on a working plantation. By the time Hunter arrived, it was already known for its support of artists in multiple disciplines. Hunter continued to work in the fields until sometime during the 1920s, when she started doing domestic indoor work, cooking, washing, and cleaning. She would clear out the rooms vacated by artists-in-residence, becoming exposed to the tools of artmaking. Sometime in the 1940s, she asked François Mignon, a land- scape artist himself, and the plantation librarian and curator, for permission to try her hand at “marking,” using some tubes of oil paint that had been left behind. She had always been making, whether it was dolls for her children, colorful quilts, basket weaving, or sewing clothes. Mignon recalled providing her with a discarded window shade for canvas and some turpentine. Hunter went on to paint thousands of pictures, mostly in the evening hours when she was finished with work. Using brilliant colors that she mixed on a plywood board, Hunter would sit at a table with a canvas on her lap and paint scenes that she knew intimately from the inside. She earned recognition for her art during her lifetime, eventually needing to distinguish idle visitors from art buyers with a sign posted on her doorframe that charged admission of twenty-five cents just to look.In this tranquil image of a mother and child engaged in paring apples, the two figures are situated outside in the warm sun. One can almost hear the insects humming. The mother looms large in this setting, with her back straight, head regally inclined in her honest activity, and sitting in a throne-like chair under the shade of a tree that is dwarfed by her figure. The child sits in obeisance at her feet in the shade of an umbrella. In the distance is a structure that strongly resembles the historic Yucca House, the first residence on Melrose Plantation erected between about 1795 and 1800. The name “Clemence” is written along a path on the left-hand side of the painting. Hunter was not able to read or write. For a brief period between 1945 and 1950, her paintings were signed with this name, which she sometimes claimed as her own original name, by James Register, a visiting writer who spent three months at Melrose while researching a book on Louisiana.Stacy C. Hollander, “Clementine Hunter,” exhibition brochure for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020).http://nodes.emuseum.com/BU1BGBAG/apis/emuseum/network/v1/vocabularies/termMaster26674http://nodes.emuseum.com/BU1BGBAG/apis/emuseum/network/v1/vocabularies/termMaster26674http://nodes.emuseum.com/BU1BGBAG/apis/emuseum/network/v1/vocabularies/termMaster2667419401950 1996 1 1 Object information is a work in progress and may be updated with new research. Records are reviewed and revised, and the American Folk Art Museum welcomes additional information. To help improve this record, please email photoservices@folkartmuseum.orgClementine Hunter was born on Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana, in late 1886 or early 1887. Her family moved to Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches when she was a teenager, and she began work as a fieldhand soon after. She had two children with her first husband, Charles Dupree, and five with her second husband, Emmanuel Hunter, a woodcutter. She made quilts, dolls, and baskets in her spare time, and in the 1920s, after she started doing domestic indoor work, she began to paint.
Melrose Plantation, where Hunter lived for much of her life, was a haven for artists. Encouraged by François Mignon, the plantation librarian, Hunter began to paint using oils discarded by an artist-in-residence. Hunter’s several thousand paintings chronicle work and recreational activities on the plantation as well as the spiritual beliefs and religious practices of her community.
In the rural South, African American yards and gardens are often an extension of the working kitchen. This work scene, sympathetically depicted, is presented on a flattened plane close to the picture surface. A comfortably seated woman is paring apples; she is almost as tall as the tree that protects her from the sun as she performs the common kitchen task. A child, seated on a stool and shaded by an umbrella on a post, hands apples to the parer from a basket. The single chimney and veranda-like porch of the plantation building on the left is common to African American vernacular architecture. It resembles Yucca House, the first residence on Melrose Plantation, erected between about 1795 and 1800. The signature “Clemence” was typical for the artist between 1945 and 1950; another set of personal initials was added to the painting around 1970.
Lee Kogan, "The Apple Paring," in Stacy C. Hollander, American Anthem: Masterworks from the American Folk Art Museum (New York: Harry N. Abrams in association with American Folk Art Museum, 2001), 375.PAINTINGGod gave me the power. Sometimes I try to quit paintin’. I can’t. I can’t. —Clementine HunterClementine Hunter brought truth and dignity to the everyday activities of a rural southern agricultural lifestyle that was rapidly fading into history. In her largely matriarchal world, industrious women whose physical toil never ceases run the engine of life. When not engaged in washing, fishing, laundering, picking cotton, or food preparation, they function as the moral compass of their communities, attending church, a baptism, or a funeral. In Hunter’s art, women normalize life; men disrupt it, letting off steam by carousing on rowdy Saturday nights.Hunter was born into a Louisianan Creole family on Hidden Hill Plantation along the Cane River. Here the family continued the fieldwork of picking cotton and pecans that their enslaved grandparents had done. When she was a teenager, they moved to Melrose Plantation in Natchitoches. The owner, Cammie G. Henry, ran the historic Melrose as something of an artist’s colony situated on a working plantation. By the time Hunter arrived, it was already known for its support of artists in multiple disciplines. Hunter continued to work in the fields until sometime during the 1920s, when she started doing domestic indoor work, cooking, washing, and cleaning. She would clear out the rooms vacated by artists-in-residence, becoming exposed to the tools of artmaking. Sometime in the 1940s, she asked François Mignon, a land- scape artist himself, and the plantation librarian and curator, for permission to try her hand at “marking,” using some tubes of oil paint that had been left behind. She had always been making, whether it was dolls for her children, colorful quilts, basket weaving, or sewing clothes. Mignon recalled providing her with a discarded window shade for canvas and some turpentine. Hunter went on to paint thousands of pictures, mostly in the evening hours when she was finished with work. Using brilliant colors that she mixed on a plywood board, Hunter would sit at a table with a canvas on her lap and paint scenes that she knew intimately from the inside. She earned recognition for her art during her lifetime, eventually needing to distinguish idle visitors from art buyers with a sign posted on her doorframe that charged admission of twenty-five cents just to look.In this tranquil image of a mother and child engaged in paring apples, the two figures are situated outside in the warm sun. One can almost hear the insects humming. The mother looms large in this setting, with her back straight, head regally inclined in her honest activity, and sitting in a throne-like chair under the shade of a tree that is dwarfed by her figure. The child sits in obeisance at her feet in the shade of an umbrella. In the distance is a structure that strongly resembles the historic Yucca House, the first residence on Melrose Plantation erected between about 1795 and 1800. The name “Clemence” is written along a path on the left-hand side of the painting. Hunter was not able to read or write. For a brief period between 1945 and 1950, her paintings were signed with this name, which she sometimes claimed as her own original name, by James Register, a visiting writer who spent three months at Melrose while researching a book on Louisiana.Stacy C. Hollander, “Clementine Hunter,” exhibition brochure for American Perspectives: Stories from the American Folk Art Museum Collection (New York: American Folk Art Museum, 2020).