1913/01/30
Harvard Herald
Northwest Herald, used with permission

Opens Studio in Los Angeles

E. A. Burbank, the Famous Indian Painter, Locates in the West

After an absence of three years, E. A. Burbank, painter of the Indians and Indian life, has returned to Los Angeles to reside permanently. Like so many other painter folk, Mr. Burbank has gone far afield, but he has always intended coming back to the Angel city and has now opened a permanent studio.

When he left Los Angeles three years ago, Mr. Burbank went to Ganado, Arizona, a settlement of the Navajos, where he has painted some of his most successful pictures. The nearest railroad to this settlement is at Gallup, N.M., 60 miles distant by stage and consequently this little settlement has retained much of its quaintness and charm of earlier days and is only visited by artists and writers for "local color."

Within a radius of 10 miles there are thousands of Navajo Indians and this has proved a fertile field for both the wielder of the brush and the pen.

Mr. Burbank maintains a permanent studio in the little settlement and remained there nearly a year after leaving this city. Mr. and Mrs. Burbank enjoyed the experience, and after a trip to Chicago, again returned to the settlement for some months, coming to Los Angeles after their second trip to the Windy city.

Mr. Burbank has been devoting much time to the painting of composition pictures depicting Indian life. His large canvas of the Moqui snake dance, which he did after leaving here, is now hung in the public library of Youngstown, O.. and several other paintings of this character are owned in large eastern collections.

While realizing fully the charm of the old days, Mr. Burbank also paints the modern life of the tribes. A large canvas, "Leaving Home for the Carlisle Indian School," reproduced today, has been reproduced in color by a large eastern printing firm and has attracted much attention. It shows the son of the family, tall and gaunt, leaving home for his "white" education. Mr. Burbank disclaims the old notion that Indians never show emotion, and he has painted into this canvas a family tragedy of the redmen adjusting themselves into the plan of modern civilization.

Mr. Burbank is a painstaking painter. He is greatly interested in the life and habits of the Indians and his work practically has shown his skills in the painting of textiles. The difference between corduroy, velvet, Indian blankets, and the common "store clothes" of the departing son are all faithfully displayed in the canvas/

The first of the year closed a large and successful exhibition which Mr. Burbank held in the gallery of Marshall Field in Chicago, and from this collection a number of canvases have been sent on to form the nucleus for a local showing. He has secured the Daniel studio, 2620 Manitou avenue, East Los Angeles, where he will make his permanent headquarters and where he now has several decidedly interesting Indian paintings. - Los Angeles (Cal.) Express."