Chief Tja-Yo-Ni

The sculptor Edward Warren Sawyer, who trained with Hermon Atkins MacNeil at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in the mid-1890s, sought out the artist Elbridge Ayer Burbank in Yuma, Arizona. For a short time in 1904, Sawyer worked alongside Burbank, producing two-inch bas-relief medallions in silver and bronze of many of the same subjects as the painter. Although Sawyer’s subject matter and general format were in some respects similar to those in Burbank’s portraits, Sawyer produced idealized profiles rather than ethnographic records. His medallions were collected by Burbank’s uncle and patron, Edward E. Ayer, as well as by Charles Hutchinson, the president of the Art Institute from 1882 to 1924.