Untitled (Man with Pipe)

Description

Many scholars have connected Bill Traylor’s top-hatted men to death spirits associated with West African and Caribbean religions, such as Baron Cimetière, who is seen in Myrlande Constant’s flag on view nearby. Oral histories and literature by Southern African Americans record how visions of death as a dapper trickster, which had originated in Africa, continued to circulate and evolve in the United States. Traylor’s elegantly clad, pipe-smoking men also relate to Montgomery citizen Davis Ross, who dressed in such an elegant manner and ran the Ross-Clayton Funeral Home on (Monroe Street beginning in 1929; South Union Street from 1939 to 1958), where Traylor often spent the night in the late 1930s.