Couse, Eanger Irving 1866 - 1936
E.I. Couse was born in Saginaw, Michigan and began his art career by sketching the Chippewa Indians who lived around his home town. Indians remained his favorite subject matter throughout his long and successful career. He painted houses and barns to earn enough money for art school and, at the age of eighteen, he attended the Chicago Art Institute and later, The National Academy of Design in New York. In 1887 he went to Paris to study at the Academie Julian under Robert Fleury and Adolphe Bouguereau. It was Bouguereau who was largely responsible for his superb draftsmanship and classical technique. Couse returned to Paris many times in subsequent years and on one of those visits married Virginia Walker, a fellow student at the Academy.
Couse visited Taos for the first time in 1902, having heard of its artistic potential from Joseph Sharp. In Taos he found the perfect subject matter; his paintings began to take on more color and new authority. In 1912, when the Taos Society of Artists was formed, he was elected president, and in 1927, the family established a year-round home there. His wife died two years later and though he continued to paint, he never fully recovered.
Couse won award after award and was a member of innumerable art and social societies. His poetic interpretation of the Taos Indian with clay pottery in the firelight, or the tall white trunk of the aspen tree as a background for the glowing flesh of the Indian became familiar to thousands.