Kiowa, Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory
Oil on panel, 8" x 6"
Newberry Library: Edward E. Ayer Collection
|
|
| Gi-aum-e Hon-o-me-tah Kiowa, Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory Oil on panel, 8" x 6" Newberry Library: Edward E. Ayer Collection |
The first significant exhibition of Elbridge Ayer Burbank’s work since the early twentieth century, the Butler Institute of American Art’s traveling exhibit was enhanced by the Newberry Library’s renowned collection of materials on the histories, cultures, and literatures of American Indian peoples.
When Elbridge Ayer Burbank traveled to the American West to paint a portrait of the famous Apache Indian Geronimo in March of 1897, he did not intend to stay. An established portrait painter in Chicago, Burbank thought of the journey west as a summer outing. But days turned into weeks, and it was four months before Burbank returned to Chicago to show his first 19 Indian portraits, 17 of which sold immediately. Burbank had found his niche-American Indians portraits sought as much for their ethnographical value as their artistry.
Burbank, who was born in 1858 in Harvard, Ill., began his art studies in 1874 at the Academy of Design (later the Art Institute of Chicago). In 1880, he opened a small studio in St. Paul, Minn. He received a year of informal training in Munich, Germany, before returning to Chicago, where he joined in the excitement surrounding the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893. Burbank enjoyed relative success in the Chicago art world at this time, showing African American genre scenes and German-style still-lifes in local art organization exhibitions and serving on several important juries.
However, when his uncle, Edward Ayer, the first president of the Field Museum of Natural History and a Newberry Library trustee, commissioned him to travel west to paint Geronimo, Burbank seized upon the opportunity. His initial plan was to paint the commissioned portrait, and then continue into Texas to make more African American sketches, but he never made it past Fort Sill, in Oklahoma Territory. He wrote his uncle, "I have never [been] so taken with a subject as I am with these Indians. I have made arrangements to stay here all Summer." After only five months in the West, Burbank voiced his goal to "paint every single Indian tribe in America."
Burbank's portraits were valued by many for their ethnographical qualities, particularly among those worried about the disappearance of the Indian and Indian culture. However, ethnography-a branch of anthropology dealing with the scientific description of individual cultures-was not his primary purpose as an artist. Rather, he enjoyed how his on-site knowledge of the West and acquaintance with numerous Indian tribes placed him in a position of respect and authority with his eastern patrons-collectors and ethnographers alike. Burbank decorated his Chicago studio with western paraphernalia and proffered his expertise for American Indian displays at the Field Museum.
Never very comfortable in social circles, and a sufferer of manic-depression, Burbank retreated even further from society life as he traveled West more frequently. He wrote his uncle, "[I] am so glad I am not cooped up in a studio in Chicago...I'd rather be with the Indians than white people as [I] have more fun with them and get along so nice with them." In 1903, Burbank left the East behind completely. "I would not think of going home for any length of time," Burbank wrote, "the rest of my life will be devoted among the Indians and I have a life's work ahead of me."
With the deaths of the most famous Indians, many patrons' interest in portraits waned. Burbank, seeking a way to leverage his most esteemed patrons, switched to red conté crayon drawings. These portraits were easier to turn out, and yet were still of interest to those drawn to the ethnographical value of his work. Burbank sold over 4,000 of these drawings. Throughout most of his career, Burbank had insisted on working strictly from life, not in the studio from photographs or copies of his paintings. Near the end of his career, though, Burbank succumbed to financial pressures and made copies of his originals.
Later in his life, Burbank began painting genre scenes of Indians and scenes from the Hubbell Trading Post on the Navajo Indian Reservation-a hub for artists, ethnographers, and tourists. In an effort to find new audiences for his work, Burbank moved to Los Angeles and then San Francisco where he died in 1949, after being struck by a cable car.
Major funding for American Indian Portraits: Elbridge Ayer Burbank in the West (1897-1910) was made available by The Christensen Fund and the Illinois Humanities Council, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the Illinois General Assembly.
Additional funders included The Chicago Community Trust, The Robert G. and Miranda Donnelley Family Fund of The Donnelley Foundation, The Frankel Family Foundation, Stephen and Cindy Mitchell, and The Spaulding Fund.