Couse Comes Home

By Rebekah Powers | March 2024

Eanger Irving Couse was one of the Taos Society Artists who painted scenes of Native American life that captured the imagination and refined the encounter between Native American culture and the rest of the world. Those are unsure of the pronunciation may be told: “Couse rhymes with Taos” and he still reigns here as an “influencer” from a century ago.

Growing up around the logging industry in Saginaw, Michigan, young Couse observed with fascination a Chippewa youth on the river in a birchbark canoe, the packs he was carrying, the moccasins. He watched his mother buy berries from an older Chippewa woman, fascinated by her clothing, jewelry and lifestyle. These early glimpses opened the mind of the young boy to a life which seemed to him much more interesting than logging.

Later, with a portfolio of drawings, he was accepted into The National Academy and was soon winning medals and awards for life drawings which combined the strength and delicacy that would later become evident in the sumptuous paintings of Native American people that catapulted Couse onto the world stage.

Life, learning and art took him to Europe where he met the love of his life, Virginia. Returning to America, they eventually settled at the Walker Ranch, her family home in Washington with the lan that Couse would paint the people in the surrounding tribes. An evocative painting by Couse from that time has been recently acquired by Chimayo Trading. Titled “My Home & Studio”, it appeals to anyone who has ever felt that longing, that deep assurance of all is right in the world that makes a place “Home”. The painting is notable for a quality of opalescence that encompasses the twilight scene and the rolling composition and texture of the paint. Every stroke of the brush has left a mark.

How was it then, that in a few short years, forces were at play to induce him from his bucolic home and studio into what was still most certainly the Wild West? The impetus for that ultimate move was the reluctance of some of the tribes to pose for him. Couse had intended to paint Native American subjects from the surrounding tribes, fueled by his lifelong fascination with their lifestyle, appreciation for their physicality and beauty. What he did not understand was the Native American belief of some peoples that to leave an image of yourself on earth after death prevents you from moving on to the next world.

Some of his artist friends had begun to write about an art colony in the mountains of New Mexico where the landscape astounded and the adobe Taos Pueblo was a unique indigenous culture and, most importantly, the native people were willing to model for the artists! Couse painted “My Home and Studio” in that translucent liminal twilight that would become one of his hallmarks, at a turning point in his life, before he moved to Taos.

Experience the power of a painting to evoke mood and feeling, a tonality for which the artist is known. In a frame that must be seen to be believed, newly acquired work on view now by one of the most influential and beloved artists to ever call Taos home, Eanger Irving Couse.

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