Eanger Irving Couse, (1866-1936)

Firelight, Outside 24 1/4 x 29 1/4in framed 33 x 38in

Firelight, Outside
signed 'E.I. Couse' (lower right)
oil on canvas
24 1/4 x 29 1/4in
framed 33 x 38in
Painted in 1920.

Provenance
Sale, Coeur D'Alene Art Auction, Reno, July 30, 2005, lot 121 (as 'Indian Brave by a Campfire').
Acquired by the present owner from the above.

Exhibited
Salt Lake City, Utah Museum of Fine Arts, Bierstadt to Warhol: American Indians in the West, February 15 – August 11, 2013.

Literature
B. Fulton, 'New UMFA Exhibit Chronicles the American Indian in Art,' The Salt Lake Tribune, February 22, 2013, online version, https://archive.sltrib.com/article.php?id=55810813&itype=CMSID, illustrated.

We wish to thank Virginia Couse Leavitt for her kind assistance in cataloguing this lot. This painting will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonné of the artist's work.

Eanger Irving Couse was born in Saginaw, Michigan and was interested in drawing from a young age. As a young man, Couse visited and sketched the local Ojibwa Indian settlements and was generally fascinated by the Ojibwa peoples' history and folklore. 1 Despite a deep desire to pursue a career as an artist, Couse's father was unsupportive, and Couse worked as a house and barn painter in order to make enough money to attend first the Art Institute in Chicago, and then the National Academy of Design in New York. Success was almost immediate for the artist and he was winning medals for his work in his first year in New York. In 1886, after again saving money but this time working as a professional artist to do so, Couse went to Paris for a year's study at the Académie Julien and the École des Beaux-Arts. His exposure in France to master draftsman and instructor Adolphe Bouguereau had a profound influence on the artist's work.

In 1891, Couse returned to the US for a few years and initially spent time with his wife Virginia's family in Oregon where he painted his first Native American subjects: the Klickitat, Yakima and Umatilla peoples. The subsequent decade was spent in France, on the East Coast and again in Oregon. At the suggestion of Joseph Henry Sharp, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Geer Phillips, whom he had met in Paris, Couse visited Taos for the first time by train in 1902.

"Taos was everything Couse had dreamed of. The Taos people and their routines of life at the Pueblo satisfied all of his artistic requirements and desires. He recognized that in the Pueblos of the Southwest he had found the ideal Indian subjects for his paintings." 2 Between 1904 and 1927, Couse spent summers painting and living in Taos until finally moving permanently to the area in his 60s. Although Couse's work can be romanticized, in his personal life he had close friendships and associations with a number of Taos people who posed for him.

Couse's training in anatomy is evident in his frequent use of dramatic side light to accentuate the muscular and skin tone of his Taos Indian subjects. In works like Firelight, Outside, the fire's ember glow lends intimacy to the scene and enhances the overall dramatic effect. Often figures are set indoors in compositions like this, but in the case of the present work, the figure is positioned outdoors. He squats near a small outdoor fire on the shore of a still lake. Golden hues of sunrise or sunset illuminate the sky and are reflected in the mirror glass water. The figure is set in a small grove of shadowed trees, vividly accentuating his profile. Couse's ability to paint detail and accuracy of form and to relay narrative in his paintings while at the same time capturing romantic and lyrical qualities of his subjects is in evidence in the distinct style of the present work.

1 P.J. Broder, Taos: A Painter's Dream, New York Graphic Society, 1980, p. 145.
2 Broder, p. 149.