Paul B. Travis

Paul B. Travis (1891-1935) was born on a farm in West Point, Ohio to William M. and Elizabeth Bough Travis. He studied with Henry Keller and Frank Wilcox at the Cleveland School of Art from 1913 to 1917. It was there that he became a friend and colleague of Charles E. Burchfield, who was one year ahead of him, studying from 1912 to 1916. The four of them occasionally went on sketching and trips together, most notably in mid-June, 1921, when Burchfield painted Travis’ home.

During World War I, Travis served a year in military service in France, and after the Armistice he taught “art-making techniques” at the American Expeditionary Forces University in Beaune. In 1920, he returned to Cleveland for post-graduate courses with Keller, and joined the faculty of the School of Art, where he taught drawing and painting until 1957. In 1927-28, Travis went on a 7-month sabbatical to Africa, “the land of his dreams" financed by the Gilpin Players at the Karamu House and African Art sponsors, a group of black individuals who supported exploring and collecting African art for the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History, and the Karamu House. As an artist and teacher, Travis worked in several media, including oil and watercolor painting, as well as printmaking. In the late 1930s, he visited the American Southwest.