ELBRIDGE AYER BURBANK 1858-1949
Snake Dance, copyright 1909
Oil on canvas, 30 X 40" (76.20 x 10 1. 60 cm.)
Signed, lower right
Museum purchase, 916-0-501

Throughout his travels, Elbridge Ayer Burbank befriended many Native Americans and western personalities including Chiefs Sitting Bull and Red Cloud, Buffalo Bill Cody, and William Jennings Bryan. Born in Harvard, Illinois, he began his art training in 1874 at the Academy of Design in Chicago. In the early 1880s, Burbank accepted an offer from the Northwest Illustrated Monthly to sketch towns along the Northern Pacific Railroad advertising opportunities available to prospective immigrants. After studying in Munich, Germany, Burbank opened a studio in Chicago in 1892. Burbank returned to the West when his uncle, Edward E. Ayer, president of the Field Museum of Natural History, commissioned him to paint the Apache Chief, Geronimo. Arriving at Fort Sill, Oklahoma Territory, in 1895, he began not only a life-long friendship with Geronimo, but a career that would include the portrayal of Native Americans from over 125 western tribes. During his travels through Native American country, Burbank befriended J. L. Hubbell, owner of a trading post in Ganado, Arizona, where the artist stayed for periods between 1897 and 1911. At Hubbell's request, Burbank agreed to draw two portraits from every western tribe in the United States. This agreement, though not completed, accounts for his prodigious output of red conte drawings known as "Red Heads."
In 1902, Burbank visited Joseph G. Butler, Jr., who purchased 118 portraits. Butler continued to purchase works by Burbank, the majority being acquired in 1912. Their importance lies not only in the clear, sensitive portraiture, but also in their rare accuracy as records of traditional tribal and ceremonial costumes. This exactitude can be traced to the fact that Burbank found a guaranteed entrance into the Native Americans circle with his scrapbook of past drawings. The Native Americans, intensely interested in these depictions and critical of every particular of costume, would allow him to paint them if the details were correCt.5 Burbank's accuracy and sensitivity can also be attributed to the respect and deep friendship he felt for his sitters. As Charles E Lummis wrote One of the reasons why Mr. Burbank can paint Indians . . . was not learned in art schools. He can not only see, but understand. They are to him not merely line and color, but human character... He neither idealizes nor blinks." One of the finer Burbank portraits is Chief Joseph (Fig. 1), leader of the Nez Perce, who in the late 1870s attempted to flee the United States by leading his tribe into Canada. Burbank felt that Chief Joseph was probably the most remarkable man the Native American race had produced, stating that he reminded me very much of a Quaker ... an imposing Indian, gentle, dignified, serious .... " The year the portrait was painted Joseph claimed to be 53 years old, and the last living Nez Perce chief The loose but assured brushstroke evidences the familiarity of the sitter's features to the artist. Clearly, this was a countenance Burbank had studied intensely.
Another especially sensitive portrait is Chief Geronimo (Fig. 2). The simplicity of design, devoid of ornament, the loosely brushed background with strong, rather flat, areas of red and yellow costume both balance and frame the intensely personal description of Geronimo's face. Burbank stated, "His keen, shrewd face was deeply furrowed with strong lines. His small black eyes were watery, but in them there burned a fierce light.... I tried to get Geronimo's real character into the portrait .... every wrinkle in his face and even a mole on his cheek." As for Geronimo's verdict, ". . . he turned, laughed., and slapped me on the back." While the Butler Institute collection of Burbank's work consists mainly of portraits from life, the work that is artistically most significant is Snake Dance. The Snake Dance, an elaborate, nine-day prayer for rain, was one of the most famous Hopi (Moqui) ceremonies. At the request of the Smithsonian Institution, the ritual was performed in 1907 at Walpi, Arizona, and Burbank went there specifically to paint it. Although many of the tribal dances were forbidden to outsiders, because of Burbank's close relationship with the Hopis he was allowed to witness the full ceremony. In September of 1907, the Kanst Gallery exhibited fourteen canvases done at Walpi, three of which were large. Illustrating the exhibition's review in the Los Angeles Times is a Snake Dance (copyright 1908, Hubbell Trading Post National Historic Site). The Butler Institute's Snake Dance, copyright 1909, was probably painted a year later. As was common with Burbank, the two versions of Snake Dance are nearly identical. The color scheme of the brown, orange, and black of the dancers contrasted with the light sand background, and the snake shrine with a kneeling snake dancer in the middle ground center are similar. The dancers' faces are blackened and their chins covered with resin to represent a rain cloud. Burbank's academic training is most notable in the dancers' well-modeled bodies in various stepping positions, grouped in twos, as they circle the shrine; the figure on the left is using an eagle feather to distract a snake from coiling.
The change from portraits to large genre scenes seems to have begun with the three large canvases in the 1907 exhibition. The Los Angeles Times critic reviewing the 1907 exhibition noted, "These pictures are not portraits, as most of his former work has been. They are close and sympathetic studies of Indian life .... " This Native American life, long since vanished, survives in the clear depiction and insight of Burbank's work.

CLYDE SINGER