Born in Saginaw,
Michigan, Eanger Couse is primarily known for Taos Pueblo Indian males sitting
or squatting by camp fire light, suggesting that Indians were peaceful,
dignified human beings and not the savages of Western lore.
Growing up in
Saginaw, he lived among the Chippewa Indians and as a youngster did sketches of
these native people. From a poor family, he was a determined artist who studied
for three months at the Art Institute of Chicago, having earned just enough
money by painting houses, and then he returned to Saginaw to earn more money so
he could go to New York City which he did in 1885. He enrolled in the National
Academy of Design and did many odd jobs to support himself, and after two years
returned to Saginaw, again to earn money.
In 1887, he went to
Paris to the Academie Julian where his great influence became the superb
draftsmanship and classical techniques of William Adolphe Bouguereau. Couse
returned to Paris many times, and on one of these trips met his future wife,
Virginia Walker, an art student whose family had a ranch in Oregon.
When he and his
wife visited her parents on a sheep ranch in Oregon, he painted the Yakima,
Umatilla, and Klikitat Indians in the pastel colors of the French Barbizon
School. However, there was little interest in Indian subject matter for fine
art in America. He also painted pastoral scenes, which were more popular than
his Indian subjects.
Couse went back to
France and settled in a rural town in the province of Pas de Calais on the
English Channel and painted bucolic genre scenes, invariably with sheep on
hillsides. Although he had stylistic influences from Europe, he became more and
more determined to create an art that was uniquely American and was
increasingly fascinated with Indians as subject matter.
In 1902, Couse
visited Taos, New Mexico for the first time, having heard about it in Paris
from his friend, Joseph Henry Sharp. In Pueblo Indians, Couse found the subject
matter that seemed right for him, but he had difficulty finding ones to pose
because of their belief that the soul of the sitter passes into the picture
once it is completed.
In 1912, when the
Taos Society of Artists was formed, he was elected its first president, and in
1927, he and his family moved there permanently. His wife died two years later,
much affecting his spirit and the vitality of his paintings.
Although he posed
models for sketching outdoors, he continued to paint in his comfortable studio
in a French academic manner. He also painted occasionally in Arizona, going
first in 1903, to the Hopi ceremonies at Walpi.
His models for most
of his New Mexico Indian figure painting were Ben Lujan and Geronimo Gomez, Taos
Pueblo residents. The tone is poetic and peaceful and reflects a civilization
that is at peace with itself.
Usually the
squatting Indian figures were engaged in domestic activity such as preparing
food, and their handsome physiques were accentuated by moonlight.
Beginning 1914, his
paintings were used on calendars by the Santa Fe Railway and became the basis
for the company's comprehensive Southwest art collection. The first calendar
painting was "Wal-si-el, Good Medicine", which initiated the tradition
of using Taos painters on the calendars, and twenty-three of them had work by
Couse.
Source:
David Michael
Zellman, "300 Years of American Art"
Peggy and Harold Samuels,
"Encyclopedia of Artists of the American West"
(Courtesy of AskArt)
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