Elbridge Ayer Burbank, A Portrait of a Young Black Boy, n.d., Chalk, 20 in. x 16 in. (50.8 cm x 40.6 cm), Museum purchase, The Nancy Gray Sherrill, Class of 1954, Collection Acquisition Fund 2018.27

A Portrait of a Young Black Boy is the Davis Museum’s first acquisition of a work by E.A. Burbank. An American painter who specialized in portraits, Elbridge Ayer Burbank grew up in Illinois and attended the Art Institute of Chicago. After graduation he worked for Northwest Magazine, an opportunity that allowed him to travel throughout the United States and Europe. Burbank spent two years in England as a portrait painter and set up a portrait studio upon returning to Chicago in 1892. In this studio Burbank specialized in painting small-scale portraits of African-American children.

A Portrait of a Young Black Boy was likely drawn while Burbank was in Chicago. Although it appears to be unfinished, the head of the young boy in this chalk drawing displays the naturalism, attention to detail and sensitivity of Burbank’s portraiture. While miniature portraits, some as small as 2 inches by 2 inches, became his trademark style early in his career, scholarship has focused on his later, and larger, works. In the late 1890s Burbank was commissioned to paint the portraits of the remaining Native American tribal Chiefs in the United States. He moved to California and traveled throughout the West recording the peoples of the disappearing indigenous cultures.