Not vanish - portraits by Elbridge Ayer Burbank

 

 Gi-aum-e Hon-o-me-tah, 1897.

Pah-Puh, 1898.

Poe-Shom-Ee, 1904.

Quen-Chow-A, 1897.

Christian-Naiche, circa 1899.

Chief Black-Coyote, 1901.

Tlo-Be-Nel-Ly, 1910.

Pah-Lah-Wool-Ey, 1904.

A-A-Wah, 1904.

Chief Po-Ka-Gon (Simon Pokagon), 1898.

Night-Killer, circa 1890s.

O-Ko-A-Po-Bi, circa 1900. I believe this to be a vintage print made after the original painting.

Mother and Children, 1908.

Chief Geronimo, 1899.

Shield, 1899.

Zy-You-Wa. This is a vintage print made after the original painting.

Wick-Ah-Te-Wah, 1898.

Curley, 1897.

Pahl-Lee, 1898.

Two portraits of Ton-Had-Dle, 1899.

Rain-in-the-Face, circa 1890s.

Ho-Mo-Vi, 1898.

Rah-Ah-Rah and Baby, Juane, 1898.

(I'm very uncertain about the spelling and, especially, the correct usage of capitalization in the Native American names. I've tried, without success, to verify the proper forms. So I apologize if I've totally mucked it up.)

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Elbridge Ayer (E. A.) Burbank (10 August 1858, Harvard, Illinois - 21 April 1949, San Francisco),  American artist known for his portraits of Native Americans; by 1914 he'd completed more than twelve hundred, from one-hundred and twenty-five tribes. After attending public schools, he enrolled at the Chicago Academy of Design, and later completed two periods of extended study in Munich, 1886-87 and 1889-1890. His maternal uncle Edward E. Ayer was a successful business magnate, museum philanthropist, and antiquarian collector of books, original manuscripts, and other materials relating to the history and ethnology of Native American peoples at the time of European encounter. This would appear to have some influence on the nephew's artistic focus. Over a period of several years, Burbank spent many months at the Hubbell Trading Post in Arizona, where he studied and painted Native Americans; he also spent time at Fort Sill in Oklahoma and at Pine Ridge Agency in South Dakota. He painted portraits of the greatest living Native American leaders, including Geronimo, Red Cloud and Chief Joseph; he is believed to be the only person to paint the military and spiritual leader Geronimo from life. The eighty-year-old Oglala Lakota Chief Blue Horse who had befriended Burbank, called him “Son of the Shadow-Maker.” As an adult, Burbank was diagnosed with what would now be called bipolar disorder. He was treated at several different facilities during his life, most notably for more than ten years at the State Mental Hospital in Napa, California. He died at the age of ninety in San Francisco, after being struck and severely injured, three months earlier, by a cable car.

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As an example of how tricky it can often be when preparing images for my blog posts, these are the two versions I found of the portrait of Ton-Had-Dle shown above. Both were good quality images, both from very respectable websites. So how, without being able to see the work in person, would I know which - if either - most closely resembled the actual article...?