George Henry Clements
George Henry Clements (February 12, 1854 – December 16, 1935) was an American artist who was best known for watercolor paintings he made in an impressionist style.
He had a folklorist's appreciation of Louisiana's Creole culture and was a supporter of civil rights for the Black communities that were oppressed by Jim Crow laws in that state.
[1] Later that year, after his father was killed by a bear while hunting on his ranch, Clements's mother took him and his three older brothers back to her family home in New Orleans.
[7] The two men celebrated Louisiana's creole culture and shared a fervent opposition to the state's oppressive Jim Crow laws.
Clements wrote that having returned from France he felt "impelled to cry aloud to my fellow countrymen exhorting them to feel more confidence in the aesthetic possibilities and accomplishments of our great republic.
Describing Clements's paintings as "well written", the author praised his use of form and color to make "a distinct mental, as well as a visual, impression."
"[26][27] The following year, Art Interchange, a general-audience magazine, noted the "power and authority" in Clements's painting and placed him in the front rank among artists of his day.
Its reporter said he spent his time painting, "drawing his subjects now from groups of lounging Mexicans, now from sober Gloucester fishermen, or from New Orleans Italian dock workers.
"[33] When Clements traveled to New Orleans, he often painted genre and landscape watercolors at a plantation near Opelousas, Louisiana, that was owned by members of his mother's family, the Toledanos.
[33] Other critics found the show highly entertaining[35] and "decidedly refreshing",[36] but one felt the works displayed were repetitive and monotonous[37][38] and, while praising the paintings' vivid color and keen sunlight, a critic for the New York Times wondered "why Mr. Clements should have been given an entire gallery and an opportunity to hang 78 pictures in so comparatively small an exhibition.
"[39] During the rest of the first decade of the twentieth century, Clements continued to participate in group exhibitions and in 1913 illustrated a collection of short lyrics, each having a refrain that pointed to a moral lesson.
[3] The most really satisfactory feature of the whole [1901 Water Color Club] exhibition was the special separate display of nearly six dozen examples by George H. Clements, washed in freshly, and with an enthusiastic delight in the operation.
The grain of the paper is allowed to contribute to the effect; its whiteness is left in places undisturbed; there is no attempt to secure atmosphere by pumping on the drawing or fumbling over it with brush or blotter.
The net impression of this room full of drawings was decidedly refreshing, and made one find a good many of the other exhibits labored and unimaginative.
Critics noted his skillful handling of color in both mediums but generally considered the subdued tones of his oils to be outmatched by the bright hues of the watercolors.
[33] Calling attention to the sense of immediacy he was able to convey in his watercolors, a critic noted a talent for making a "vivid, brief, suggestive record".
Called "Madonna of the Tubs", it appeared in the December issue of Harper's Monthly[51] and a year later Houghton Mifflin republished it as a standalone book.
Its caption concerned the surprise of a Black woman named Aunt Charity when a young girl came by to say, "Mammy say she gwine to make bread, and will you lend her some salt, an' some lard, an' some 'east, an' some flour; she already got de water.
He wrote: "There is no sufficiently expressive adjective in the English language to qualify the kind of sportsman who joyously butchers a sleeping 'gator adorning the shore of a romantic bayou in the Sunny South.
[58]: 99 A typical review at the time of its publication described the book as encompassing "the quaint charm of plantation life" and called the eponymous tale-teller a "loving old village philosopher full of the poetry and rhythm of his race.
"[59] Crediting its author with a focus on gender issues and "tentative forays into feminist fiction", a modern reviewer said, "the atrocities of Reconstruction and the violent repression of blacks in the real South were forgotten as Stuart's humorous and pathetic black characters spoke garbled truths in dialect on behalf of a silenced and forgotten race.
The insurrectionists succeeded in defeating police and local militia and, after federal forces negotiated their surrender, no charges were brought against them and they were permitted to resume their lives as if the battle had never occurred.
However, in the years prior to and following the insurrection, Clements's friend, the New Orleans novelist George Washington Cable, had written articles defending the civil rights of Blacks and supporting the aims of the Reconstruction Government, and after both men had moved to New York, Clements wrote Cable to say he was sick of the "nightmare" of living in a "melancholy atmosphere of slavery and criminal prejudice" [8][67] Because there were so few New Orleans citizens who spoke out for civil rights and against racial injustice, the two men may well have first met as members of that minority.
[7][8][68] Regardless of how they became associated with one another, by 1884 they were sufficiently close that a reporter described Cable's study as having on its walls, "Several landscapes in oil of Louisiana scenery and a Negro figure piece—all by George H.
It possessed a centerboard rather than a keel for reducing side slip when sailing into the wind, and was consequently able to operate in shallow as well deep waters,[71] Built for him in a New Rochelle, New York, boatyard, it was, according to one reporter, "a house boat and yacht combined, in which all the points that make for speed have been sacrificed for comfort.
[73] Another time, Clements had to call on the US Lifesaving Service to tow the sailboat outbound through breakers at Beaufort Inlet along the coast of North Carolina.
An obituary said, "he was very fond of children and spent a great deal of time making balls and toys for the little folks and his charities among the poor and distressed were well known.
