CLEMENTINE HUNTER (AMERICAN/LOUISIANA, 1887-1988)

We are pleased to offer this wonderful Clementine Hunter fresh to the market with an impeccable provenance.  An accomplished surgeon on the faculty at Tulane University, Dr. Robert Ryan was an important patron of Louisiana artist Clementine Hunter who collected hundreds of her paintings, buying directly from the artist starting in the early 1960s.  He would visit her at Melrose Plantation often and spend a couple of hours with her, developing a humorous banter over the course of their relationship.  Dr. Ryan had his own inventory system for his expansive collection of Hunter works. 

In the mid-1970s, Dr. Ryan and his wife Yvonne donated part of their collection to the Louisiana State Museum.  Paintings were also gifted to the Dallas Museum of Art, New Orleans Museum of Art, Birmingham Museum of Art, National Museum of Women in the Arts and Pensacola Museum of Art among other institutions.  The Ryan provenance is among the finest that can be attached to a Hunter painting.  This exceptionally large composition depicts a bevy of angels filling the heavens, a rare theme in Hunter’s oeuvre.