Clementine Hunter (American, 1887-1987), Two Women Eating Watermelon

Oil on canvas board, signed with monogram at lower right, presented with a Polaroid photograph of Hunter holding this work and recent appraisal documents, framed.

Board 10 x 14 in.; Frame dimensions 11 1/4 x 15 1/4 in.

Purchased by the consignor from a New Orleans gallery in the 1970s.

Clementine Hunter was born at Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville, Louisiana. Raised in a Creole family, she received little formal education and worked from a young age as a field hand before becoming a domestic worker and cook at Melrose Plantation. In her fifties, she was inspired by visiting artists and used discarded paints and materials to paint scenes from memory, chronicling the lives, labor, and traditions of Black plantation communities in rural Louisiana.

Her vibrant, narrative paintings—depicting cotton picking, river baptisms, weddings, funerals, and everyday moments—earned her recognition as one of America’s most important self-taught artists. By the 1940s and 1950s, her work was exhibited widely, eventually entering major museum collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum. In 1986, she received the National Heritage Fellowship, the United States’ highest honor for folk and traditional artists. Hunter continued painting until her death at nearly 101 years old, leaving behind works that provide a deeply personal and enduring record of African American life in the rural South.

Good estate condition.