Eanger Irving Couse (American, 1866-1936). Klikitat Chief. Oil on canvas. 15 x 15 inches (38.1 x 38.1 cm). Signed lower ...

Description

Eanger Irving Couse (American, 1866-1936)
Klikitat Chief
Oil on canvas
15 x 15 inches (38.1 x 38.1 cm)
Signed lower right: E.I. Couse

PROVENANCE:
Quail Hollow Galleries, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma;
Altermann Galleries, Santa Fe, New Mexico, April 4, 2014, lot 375;
Private collection, Chicago, Illinois.

LITERATURE:
V.C. Leavitt, Eanger Irving Couse: The Life and Times of an American Artist, 1866-1936, Norman, Oklahoma, 2019, p. 144, illustrated.

One of the most prolific figure painters of the Taos Society of Artists, E.I. Couse, was classically trained in Chicago at the Art Institute, in New York at the Art Students League, and in Paris at the Académie Julian. While in Paris, his friend and fellow student, Joseph Henry Sharp, urged him to visit the northern New Mexico town of Taos. Couse began regular visits to the area, and he and his wife Virginia eventually settled there.

Prior to moving to Taos, Couse lived for a short time in the Pacific Northwest. There he continued a boyhood interest in Native American life by painting members of the Klikitat, Yakima, and Umatilla tribes. Klikitat Chief appears to have been painted upon Couse's return to the Pacific Northwest from Étaples, France (circa 1897-1901) and shortly before his move to New York. Unlike his later Taos paintings, where he carefully controlled his model's dress and setting, these early paintings more often portray his subjects as he observed them, in their native costume and environment. Even at this relatively early point in his career, Couse was clearly at ease in skillfully capturing the personality and stature of his subject. While much of the artist's later Taos work repeatedly interpreted similar themes and subjects, these early paintings produced in the Pacific Northwest show, by contrast, a wider diversity of subject matter. As the present painting demonstrates, Couse developed and mastered the style and painterly techniques he would employ in his Taos years at a relatively early point in his career. For some critics, these earlier paintings display a greater freshness than his later works. While the paintings Couse produced for the Santa Fe Railroad and other major patrons earned him great success and secured him a national reputation, works like Klikitat Chief occupy a very special place in his oeuvre, for they exhibit the particular talent and emotional sensitivity he felt for his Native American subjects long before he ever moved to New Mexico.


More information about Eanger Irving Couse. See also: Couse, Eanger Irving, Couse, E. Irving, Couse, Eanger-Irving Artist.

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