Bill Traylor (1854-1949)

Man with a Plow, by celebrated self-taught artist Bill Traylor (1854-1949), is dated to July 1939, making it among the earlier recorded works by the artist. After a lifetime on a plantation, former slave Traylor moved to Montgomery, Alabama, and began to draw. In the spring or summer of 1939, Traylor met artist Charles Shannon, who began to provide Traylor with artmaking materials and preserve the older artist's drawings.

Traylor drew on found or repurposed cardboard. Man with a Plow is rendered on the reverse of a tobacco poster, the punctures in the card indicators of where the advertisement was adhered to a wall or billboard. Here, the artist erased and reworked; he considered the positioning of the plow in relation to the mule. This drawing reveals the hallmarks of Traylor’s graphic, geometric images, and the surface of the card also tells a rich and layered story of how the artist approached his early compositions.