Kitchen Scene, Yellow House

Bill Traylor

ca. 1939–42 · Pencil and colored pencil on cardboard · The American Wing

Born into enslavement, Traylor—one of the most distinctive Black artists of the twentieth century—experienced dramatic historical change firsthand, including emancipation, Reconstruction, Jim Crow segregation, and the Great Migration. At the age of eighty-six, Traylor began drawing urban life around him in Montgomery, Alabama. Revealing a strong sense of design and storytelling, his renderings are striking in their disregard for spatial depth and proportion. Traylor would create more than one thousand drawings and paintings on pieces of found cardboard, including this two-tiered domestic scene featuring both interior and exterior views.

Artist

Bill Traylor

Date

ca. 1939–42

Medium

Pencil and colored pencil on cardboard

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Purchase, Anonymous Gift, 1992