Bill Traylor spent the majority of his life working as a sharecropper before moving to Montgomery, Alabama, at the age of eighty-four. In these later years of his life, he devoted his time to art. Initially focused on isolated figures, Traylor’s subject matter grew to include a wide range of people, animals, and architecture, highlighting his interest in figuration, portraiture, and everyday interactions. The bristling canine seen in Untitled (dog) was painted on the back of a cardboard box for Hershey’s chocolate. Traylor often used discarded materials for small-scale compositions such as this one.