Bill Traylor Sold at Auction Prices

Painter, b. 1854 - d. 1949

(b Alabama, circa 1856; d Montgomery, Alabama,1949) American folk artist. Bill Traylor was born a slave on the George Hartwell Traylor plantation near Benton, some 40 miles from Montgomery, Alabama. He created his first known works in 1939 at the age of eighty-three, when he began to draw with pencil on scraps of cardboard. A young local artist named Charles Shannon began bringing Traylor pastel crayons and charcoal pencils and in 1940 arranged for the artist's first formal showing through the New South group in Montgomery. Later Shannon brought Traylor's work to New York, and today it is exhibited in museums around the world. (Credit: Swann Galleries, New York, Printed & Manuscript African-Americana, February 27, 2007, lot 133)