Elbridge Ayer Burbank was born in Harvard, Illinois, and first studied art at the Chicago Academy of Design (later the Art Institute of Chicago). After graduating in 1874, he continued his studies during two separate trips to Europe. His first visits to the American West came from his time as an illustrator for the Northwest Pacific Railway, but his career is primarily defined by his portraiture of Native Americans.
Burbank was commissioned by his uncle, Edward E. Ayer, first president of the Field Columbian Museum of Chicago, to undertake a series of studies of native peoples in the Southwest, beginning in 1895. He devoted more than 50 years to this work until his death in 1949, painting or sketching over 1,200 portraits from 125 tribes. Burbank was able to paint, from life, such notable figures as Geronimo, Red Cloud, and Chief Joseph. Much like photographer Edward S. Curtis, Burbank worked from the prevailing ethnographic attitudes of the time, bringing Anglo sensitivities and ideas to his subjects.