Elbridge Ayer Burbank was born in Harvard, Illinois in 1858. A student at the Art Institute of Chicago he later had a studio in St. Paul, Minnesota and studied in Munich, Germany. Burbank became a successful painter in Chicago where he won the prestigious Charles T. Yerkes art prize. His uncle, Edward Ayer, president of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History, commissioned Burbank to paint Geronimo in 1897. The artist traveled west to fill this commission. The trip profoundly changed his life. Burbank would spend the rest of his life in the West. His richly illustrated autobiography, Burbank Among the Indian as told to Ernest Royce was published in 1944. He was killed in a cable car accident in 1949.

The founder of Darvill's Rare Prints - Fred T. Darvill - knew Burbank personally when the shop was in San Francisco during the late 1920s and 1930s. Darvill commissioned many paintings
by Burbank with the intention of selling the prints. Many E.A. Burbank prints, especially those of Indians, are only to be found at Darvill's Rare Prints to this day!