A visual diary: Clementine Hunter tells the Cane River's stories at the LSU Museum of Art

No one preserved the stories along the Cane River better than Clementine Hunter.

True, a bevy of noted writers passed through the area in her time, taking advantage of owner Cammie Henry's writers and artists colony at Melrose Plantation, where Hunter worked as a cook.

Some writers wrote about the area in detail, but Hunter lived it — and began telling the story of her home not through words but in paintings, which, as they say, are worth a thousand words.

In Hunter's case, make that millions, as the prolific painter has produced countless works, with more than 40 hanging in the LSU Museum of Art through Oct. 23.

The stories told in this exhibition, titled "Cherished: The Art of Clementine Hunter," are a little different. Those familiar with the artist's work will immediately recognize Hunter's wash day, cotton picking and wedding paintings.

But have they ever seen Hunter's depiction of a snowman at Melrose? Or a courtroom trial? Or even hunters aiming at the sky for their supper while floating in rowboats along the Cane River? Well, it can only be assumed that the waterway is the Cane River because that's what bordered the Melrose property that is situated a few miles south of Natchitoches and north of Cloutierville.

70-plus paintings that changed the trajectory

Travel along the river, and you still can imagine these scenes playing out — scenes that now make their home in the LSU Museum of Art's collection, along with pieces from collections of the Alexandria Museum of Art, the LSU Rural Life Museum and the private collection of Raising Cane's CEO Todd Graves, whose loans are probably the most rare Hunter paintings in this exhibit.

"In the beginning, I wanted the exhibit to be sort of a comparative study," said Michelle Schulte, senior curator and director of programming. "My plan was to do an entire wall of cotton pickers and let people look at the subtle differences and variations in Clementine Hunter's work. I thought, 'Wouldn't it be cool to have multiples and talk in terms of this?'" 

The exhibit's trajectory changed when Schulte discovered the 70-plus paintings in the Graves and Raising Cane's collection.

"Once I found the Graves collection, that changed my mind to do something different," she said. "When I saw the work in their collection, I knew we would do something different with these different scenes."

That's not saying the exhibit is absent of cotton-picking scenes. There are plenty of those sprinkled among the more unusual works, including a funeral complete with a gravedigger, a baptism, women playing cards and people relaxing on what appears to be a Sunday afternoon excursion on the Cane River.

Again, the Cane River is only an assumption in this case, but it seems only logical. When looking closely at this painting, you'll see a swimmer hanging on to one of the rowboats.

Is he trying to pull himself into the boat? Or can he swim at all? Maybe, just maybe, the boat is his life buoy.

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Photos, videos: LSU Museum of Art shows Clementine Hunter's stories along the Cane River

Clementine Hunter was in her 50s and working as a cook at Melrose Plantation when she first picked up a paintbrush.

Hunter's early days 

Only Hunter knew the full story in this page of her visual diary, which began with her January 1887 birth on Hidden Hill Plantation near Cloutierville in Natchitoches Parish.

Hunter never learned to read or write and spent her early days working as a plantation laborer. She eventually became the cook for Melrose Plantation, where, it's said, New Orleans painter Alberta Kinsey gave Hunter some discarded tubes of paint. Hunter was in her 50s when she used these tubes to "mark," as she described it, her first painting on a window shade. She was completely self-taught, and her work was classified in the primitive genre. 

She sold her first painting for 25 cents, and she amassed fans as time passed. People began seeking out her work, which she sold from her tiny home.

Throughout her lifetime, it is estimated that Hunter produced between 5,000 and 10,000 paintings. However, no one knows exactly how many paintings she produced. The other dimension to this number is that Hunter's paintbrush never touched some of these paintings. Over the years, imitators have tried to pass off their counterfeits as her work, so the exhibit at LSU Museum of Art showcases one of the fake works and discusses how one FBI investigation uncovered many of the forgeries. 

The origin story of Melrose 

At Hunter's home at Melrose, the plantation only added to her visual diary. The grounds were originally home to former slave Marie Thérèse CoinCoin, whose freedom was purchased from the wife of Natchitoches founder Louis Antoine Juchereau de St. Denis by French merchant Claude Thomas Pierre Metoyer.

Metoyer fell in love with CoinCoin, who was said to be beautiful. The couple became parents to 10 children, and their oldest son, Louis Metoyer, built the big house and established Melrose Plantation on the grounds of the former Yucca Plantation. 

Later, the house and grounds were purchased by John Hampton and his wife Carmelite "Miss Cammie" Garrett Henry, who turned the estate into a hub for early 20th-century writers and artists.

After a climb up the stairs into the top of the plantation's African House, visitors are not only surrounded by Hunter's murals depicting "modern" life at Melrose but they also see some of the writers and artists depicted in those murals, Louisiana's Lyle Saxon among them.

Speaking of the African House murals, visitors to the LSU Museum of Art's exhibit can get a sampling of sorts of her murals in the Graves Family and Raising Cane's Collection's painting, "A Day at Melrose."

In the painting's center is a circle encompassing the big house while daily life of feeding chickens, collecting pecans, hunting and going to church happen in and around the grounds.

The colors and layout harken back to the murals. Meanwhile, the other paintings expound on these stories — stories of loved ones getting married and dying, stories of drunken bar fights, stories of faith and the story of a time when it once snowed deep enough at Melrose to build a snowman.

Cherished: The Art of Clementine Hunter runs through Oct. 23 at the LSU Museum of Art in the Shaw Center for the Arts, 100 Lafayette St. Hours are 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday and Wednesday, 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday and Friday, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Saturday and 1 p.m.-5 p.m. Sunday. Admission is $5 for age 13 and older; and free for children age 12 and younger, university students with ID and military members and their families. For more information, call (225) 578-3000.

The museum also is hosting several programs coinciding with the exhibit:

• Fall Reception for all of its fall exhibits, 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. Thursday, Sept. 12. Admission is free.
• Lecture, "Is this a real Hunter? How the FBI Solved a Clementine Hunter Forgery Case," featuring retired FBI Special Agent Randy Deaton, 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. Sunday, Sept. 8.
• Lecture, "Cherished: The Art of Clementine Hunter," featuring LSU Museum of Art Educator Callie Smith, 6 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 18, at the Main Library, 7711 Goodwood Blvd. Admission is free.