The Willard Hotel, an enamel on Masonite painting by outsider artist William Hawkins, is offered at Slotin Folk Art Auctions.

Hawkins (1895-1990) was a self-taught artist who painted alongside his other occupations, which ranged from driving trucks to running a brothel.  

Most of Hawkins' surviving works date from the 1970s onwards

The present lot is typical of his exuberant style and depicts the Willard Hotel in Washington DC. It was executed in 1987.

The vast majority of his surviving works date from the 1970s onwards and have a large following. A painting titled Trail Riders (1982) made $70,000 at Slotin in 2012.  

The present lot is valued at $40,000-60,000 ahead of the April 30 auction.

Bill Traylor's Baby Chick, executed in charcoal on cardboard, is another highlight.

Traylor is another significant figure in America's outsider art tradition. Born into slavery in 1853, he became a sharecropper after emancipation.

Much like Hawkins, he did not take up painting seriously until he was well into his old age.

His work began to be shown in galleries in the 1940s. He was feted by the art world as a missing link between primitivism and modernism.

The record for his work is $203,750, set for Man with a Yoke in a 2001 auction at Sotheby's.

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