# Bill Traylor artist context and auction value notes

Canonical page: https://appraisily.com/artist/bill-traylor/
Profile generated: 2026-08-24T12:25:00.393Z
Quality: medium confidence, adequate sources

## Artist identity

- Birth date: 1854-04-01
- Death date: 1949-10-23
- Nationality: American
- Movements: Self-taught art
- Common media: Pencil drawing on paper or scrap cardboard, Gouache, Drawing, Painting

## About Bill Traylor

Bill Traylor (1854–1949) was an African American self-taught artist and former sharecropper whose life and work were rooted in Alabama. Born into slavery, he remained connected to plantation labor for much of his life before moving to Montgomery in old age. He began drawing there around 1939, using pencil and other materials on scraps of cardboard and paper. During the concentrated period from 1939 to 1942, he created an estimated 1,500 works that transformed memories and observations into spare, animated images. Human figures, animals, gestures, and everyday activity recur across his surviving drawings and gouaches. Traylor’s late start, compressed working period, and distinctive visual vocabulary place him within histories of American self-taught and African American art. Collectors encounter his work primarily as individual works on paper, often made on irregular or repurposed supports, as well as through museum collections and the secondary auction market.

## Common works and media

Collectors most often encounter Traylor through drawings and gouache works on paper or reused cardboard. Pencil was a core tool, and documented subjects include compact human figures, animals, and scenes derived from memory and observed life. Works associated with his concentrated 1939–1942 period in Montgomery are central to his known output. Medium and support should be recorded precisely rather than generalized, because the surviving body includes varied works on paper and cardboard.

## Market and appraisal context

Appraisal should begin by identifying whether the work is a pencil drawing, a gouache, or another work on paper or cardboard, because the source pack documents these as recurring forms. Subject also matters for comparison: authority data specifically identifies figures and animals, while the documented 1939–1942 period provides important chronological context. Appraisily’s public artist page signals a substantial auction-record set, so market analysis should compare the object with publicly recorded lots sharing its medium, support, subject, and approximate date. A realized price is a historical result rather than a prediction. The available source pack does not provide sale-by-sale provenance, condition, dimensions, or attribution notes, so those object-specific facts must be established before a defensible appraisal.

## Appraisily data basis

Appraisily artist pages combine public artist-identity research with auction records and auction-house context. When records are available, appraisal research also considers sale dates, realized prices, and comparable lots; those records provide historical evidence rather than guaranteed values.

## Sources

- Wikidata: https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q862623
- IdRef: https://www.idref.fr/075896788
- The Museum of Modern Art: https://www.moma.org/artists/7464
- Getty Vocabulary Program: https://vocab.getty.edu/page/ulan/500081799
- RKD: https://rkd.nl/en/explore/artists/251847
- Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Traylor
- Wikipedia: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Traylor
- Wikipedia: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Traylor
- Appraisily: https://appraisily.com/artist/bill-traylor/