Washday

Hunter had no formal art training and only began painting in her fifties. She spent most of her life on the Melrose Plantation in Louisiana, picking cotton and collecting pecans. Later she worked inside, cleaning houses and washing clothes. Once she did begin painting, she was quite prolific. It is believed that she produced several thousand works

An oil painting depicting a washday scene in rural Louisiana. At the top of the painting, swaths of blue, white, grey and pink depict a partially cloudy sky. At upper-center right is a green house with a red door, red-trimmed windows, a red central chimney, and a smaller black angled chimney at the right of the roof from which smoke emerges. There are three descending diagonal lines of images across the left of the painting. The top diagonal is a line of three green-topped trees. A man sits leaning against the trunk of the central tree, holding a red object to his mouth. The next diagonal is a woman, wearing a red dress and white apron, hanging sheets and clothes on a green clothesline. To the right of the clothesline, at the center of the painting, a woman wearing a blue dress and white apron sits in a red chair. She is holding what appears to be a baby dressed in yellow. The next diagonal is another, smaller clothesline on which a pair of red socks and other blue and yellow items are hung. Across the bottom edge of the painting, almost horizontal, is a row of figures. At left is a man wearing a red hat, scarf, green shirt and black trousers wheeling a red wheelbarrow that contains a yellow sack. Next is a woman wearing a green hat, blue dress and white apron, washing clothes. Next is a woman wearing a white hat, yellow dress and white apron, heading towards a short path that leads to a large black cauldon. Last is a green tree, on the other side of which is a woman wearing a blue hat, green dress and white apron, washing clothes. The painting is signed "CH" at lower right.