George Elbert Burr biography

George Elbert Burr was an American painter and engraver, known primarily for his series of etchings and drypoints dedicated to the Western United States and its wild and unique landscapes. Born in 1859 in Munroe Falls, Ohio, he spent the first ten years of his life in the great Midwestern state before moving to Cameron, Missouri, where his father had opened a store.
He trained under the guidance of his mother and enrolled in the Chicago Academy of Design in 1878, only to return to his father's home a year later. Continuing to work with his father, he began his artistic journey by dedicating himself to engravings for Harper's, Scribner's Magazine, The Cosmopolitan, and Frank Leslie's Weekly, which allowed him to travel extensively across the United States, deepening his knowledge of those landscapes that would become the center of his artistic poetry. His illustrations were also published in Volume II of John Muir’s Picturesque California, a circumstance that contributed to his professional growth and led him to work for several months, between 1888 and 1889, as a correspondent for the Observer.
1892 is a crucial year for the life and works of Burr: hired by the wealthy businessman Heber R. Bishop, he initiates the project for the creation of the illustrated catalog of the philanthropist's collection of over a thousand jade antiquities, a collection that will later be donated to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The assignment allows him to achieve a certain economic stability, which he takes advantage of by embarking on a long five-year tour of Europe with his wife Beth. It is a period of feverish activity for the artist, who visits Italy, Germany, and Great Britain, creating an abundance of drawings, watercolors, and preparatory sketches that will become the primary source for the series of copperplate engravings of European views and landscapes he will dedicate himself to once he returns home, and which will be exhibited in multiple exhibitions between the East and West Coast.
A terrible flu forces him to take a period of rest. In search of a healthy climate, he travels to Denver, Colorado, where he is captivated by the scenery of the Rocky Mountains. Here, the series of sixteen engravings - paired with sixteen watercolors - "Mountain Moods" dedicated to Estes Park is born, renowned for the innovative composition of the views. For Burr, it was a true calling card to establish himself with prestigious art clubs such as the New York Society of Etchers and the Brooklyn Society of Etchers (later renamed the Society of American Etchers). It is during the summers spent observing the Rocky Mountains, the profiles rounded by the elements, and the wild valleys that Burr's poetics are born, that iconography that will make him famous as one of the most important American engravers, straddling the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
In the harsh winters of Colorado, the artist's frail health does not find the climate suitable for recovery, so he moves between Southern California, Arizona, and New Mexico, in search of milder temperatures. But the call of Colorado begins to be felt in Burr's heart, who builds a home and studio at 1325 Logan Street in Denver, an address that for fifteen years represented the true home of the Ohio artist. The city is vibrant, and Burr grows personally thanks to contacts with artists and personalities such as Elizabeth Spalding, Charles Partridge Adams, Anne Evans and Henry Read.
In 1924, once again, health conditions forced Burr and his wife to move, leading the couple to Phoenix, Arizona. The Grand Canyon State and its iconic landscapes were already known to the engraver, who in 1921 had dedicated a series, which later became famous, renamed by experts as the "Desert Set". The scenes of the Sonoran and Mojave deserts broaden the spectrum of George Elbert Burr's works, enriching and completing his style. Among these, we recall the delicate "The Lana of mystery the desert", a black and white etching that confirms the engraver's mastery in not only capturing landscapes but also telling stories of spaces that stretch as far as the eye can see, so distinctly American, simply by inserting the element of a caravan slowly crossing the view."
George Elbert Burr will spend the last fifteen years of his life in Phoenix, where he is remembered as an active member of the community, serving as president of the Phoenix Fine Arts Association and participating with his works in exhibitions and public events. The artist's catalog is characterized by the variety of techniques used, ranging from watercolor, oil paintings, ink drawings, and especially engravings that Burr personally created. Upon his death, his wife Beth refused to sell her husband's entire inventory for fear - well-founded, indeed - that sellers might raise the prices set by her husband. A concern that embodied a way of interpreting art and life that Burr summarized by saying: "The world has been so kind to us, I worked doing what I loved to do, without ever a thought, because it gave us more money than we needed." He passed away on November 17, 1939, at the age of eighty, in Phoenix and rests at Clinton County Cemetery in Cameron, Missouri. Beside him is his beloved Beth, his lifelong companion, who died four years later."
Today George Elbert Burr is unanimously considered one of the most refined engravers of the early 20th century. His prints are present in a large number of prestigious collections, including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the British Museum, the French National Print Collection, the Luxembourg Gallery, the Victoria and Albert Museum, the Fogg Museum, the New York Public Library, and the Congressional Library in the capital, Washington, D.C. Information about his private life is rather sparse, a goal sought by the artist himself who used to say, when asked if he intended to write a biography: "My private life should not matter to the public, it's just curiosity. My works represent my life and that is the only thing that counts." The most complete and extensive collection of Burr's works can be found at the A. Reynolds Morse Collection at the Denver Public Library. The selection includes over three hundred works by the engraver, collected by Morse, an industrialist from Denver, better known for his collection of Salvador Dalí Collection works housed in the Dali Museum in Florida.