Edwin Burrage Child was a landscape and portrait painter who lived and worked in New York City and Dorset, Vermont, and was most known for his male portraiture.

Child was born in Gouverneur, New York in 1868 to Jonathan Bush Child and Sarah Burnham. In the 1880s, Child attended Amherst College and received art lessons during the summers from artist Margaret C. Whiting (1860-1946). In 1890, he graduated from Amherst College and moved to New York City to pursue a career as an artist, becoming a student in 1891 at the Art Students League. Child's artistic debut was in 1892 at the National Academy of Design annual exhibition. From 1891 to 1895, he studied under painter, muralist, and stained-glass designer John LaFarge (1835-1910), and worked as his assistant from 1896-1901. Edwin Burrage Child then spent many years working as an illustrator and writer for leading periodicals such as Scribner's, Harper's, McClure's, and others.

As a landscape painter, Child was awarded a medal at the Louisiana Purchase Exhibition in St. Louis in 1904, and the majority of his landscapes were modeled from his summer home in Dorset, Vermont. In 1908, his focused moved to easel painting -- primarily landscapes and portraits. Child was most known for his portraits of intellectual males, with sitters including Senator Dwight M. Morrow, Governor Wilbur L. Cross of Connecticut, Professor John Dewey, and painter Ivan G. Olinsky, among many others. His work appeared in shows at the National Academy of Design and the Society of Independent Artists in New York, as well as the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, the Art Institute of Chicago, and the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. He also had many one-man shows over the years, primarily in New York City. In 1930, the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D. C. held an exhibition of his portraits.

Child was married to Anna Gertrude Sykes in 1894, and they had three children: Katherine E. (1895-1966), Bradford (1896-1948), and Sargent Burrage (1900-1972). Child also made furniture as a hobby and remodeled his home in Dorset Hollow, as well as Gray's Tavern, which later became the Dorset Village Public Library. Additionally, he was a frequent lecturer, speaking at colleges and universities, including Yale, Michigan State College, Columbia, City College of New York, and Massachusetts State College at Amherst. Child spent the last ten years of his life living in Dorset, Vermont, and died in 1937.