Bill Traylor

Bill Traylor (1854–1949) ranks among the foremost African-American artists. Born to enslaved parents in the American South, he worked as a sharecropper after his family was emancipated. He later started drawing and sold his pictures in the streets. Parts of his oeuvre are now held by the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and other institutions.