Meadowlark Gallery: The Artist Biographies

George Elbert Burr (1859-1939)
George Elbert Burr was born in Monroe Falls, Ohio in 1859 and died in Phoenix, Arizona in 1939. He was a western etcher and painter. Burr studied at the Art Institute of Chicago. In 1890 he was an illustrator for Harper's and Leslie's. He then secured the commission to make one thousand ink drawings to illustrate a Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog of a bronze and jade collection. After four years at this task, Burr was enabled to study for five years in France and Italy. When Burr's health failed about 1906, he moved to Denver where he created a set of sixteen etchings called "Mountain Moods." He spent his winters in the deserts of Arizona, New Mexico, and Southern California. From this came his well known set of thirty five etchings. Burr is said to have painted about one thousand watercolors and to have drawn twenty five thousand etchings, generally small in size and showing "the miniaturist's precise delicacy."
View high resolution images of works by George Elbert Burr when available.