Bill Traylor valuation
African-American self-taught artist who began drawing in his eighties on the streets of Montgomery, Alabama.
Bill Traylor (about 1853–1949) was born into slavery in Alabama and worked as a sharecropper after emancipation.
What a work by Bill Traylor is worth
Send photographs and whatever paperwork came with it. The first question is what the work actually is — edition or unique, when, and in what condition — because everything else follows from the answer. A valuation is free, made online from the photographs you send, and it commits you to nothing. We act for sellers across the United Kingdom, Europe and the United States.
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Bio
Bill Traylor (about 1853–1949) was born into slavery in Alabama and worked as a sharecropper after emancipation. In his eighties he moved to Montgomery, and from 1939 to 1942, while sitting on the pavement, he made more than a thousand drawings on discarded cardboard of people, animals and memories from his life. The young artist Charles Shannon noticed him, gave him materials and preserved much of his work. The Smithsonian American Art Museum held a major retrospective, Between Worlds, in 2018.
What comes to market is drawings in pencil, poster paint and crayon on cardboard. Provenance, particularly any line back to Charles Shannon, is important, and a buyer will want to compare a work with documented examples. Cardboard is fragile and often acidic, so sheets should be checked for tears, soft corners, staining and old repairs.
At a glance
- Born
- 1853
- Died
- 23 October 1949, Montgomery
Whitebank Fine Art is an art advisory and gallery, not an auction house, and is not affiliated with any auction house or with the artist, their estate or their representatives. This page describes the range we advise on. Nothing here is investment advice.
