seated Indian retrieving objects from a pottery vessel, image area 23" X 28" plus fine gold frame, circa 1910, appears to be original frame, well listed artist.......The following biographical information is from J. Patterson:In 1884, at the age of 18, Couse was able to spend three months at the Chicago Art Institute before his money ran out. Undaunted, he returned home for a season of house painting. For the next two years, 1885-1887, Couse was a student at the National Academy of Design in New York. Each year he won awards at the Academy's student exhibitions.In 1887, Couse went to Paris, where he studied under Adolphe Bouguereau and Robert Fleury at the Academie Julian. For four years he won awards at that Academy, which confirmed his skill and taste.In 1891, while in Paris, he married fellow art student Virginia Walker, a rancher's daughter from Washington state near the Oregon border. The entire Couse family, including son Kibbey who was born in 1894 in Etaples, a coastal village, lived in France for several years. Within Couse's work is a group of French landscapes similar to his northwest American pieces: direct, broadly painted scenes of coastal fishing and pastorals of shepherds. These also were painted in low-key pastel colors. A pale moon can be found in several of these paintings.For a few years Couse earned his living from portraits, but he was a shrewd businessman, and he understood the need to market his work from a New York base. By maintaining a studio in the city and always being present during the winter exhibition season, he created the network of contacts artists must have in order to sell their work.Biography from Mark Sublette Medicine Man GalleryE. I. Couse was, perhaps, the most famous of the members of the Taos Society of Artists during the period of active production from the group. A highly specialized artist with a rigorous academic background, Couse painted serious figurative scenes of the Indians of Taos Pueblo, usually crouching and often fire-lit.Born in Saginaw, Michigan in 1866, Couse studied briefly at the Chicago Art Institute, spending hard-earned house painting money on his courses. After three months, (the most he could afford) Couse returned to Saginaw to earn enough money to enroll in the National Academy of Design in New York City. He received an award from the Academy in every one of the three years he studied there and, in 1887, spurred on by his success at student exhibitions, he enrolled in the Academie Julien in Paris.In Paris, Couse studied under Adolphe Bouguereau and Robert Fleury, and the work he produced garnered awards in every student exhibition he entered. It was in Paris that Couse first connected with two individuals who would be central to his life and development; the first was his future wife, Virginia Walker, and the second his mentor and the man who first brought Taos to his attention, Joseph Henry Sharp. Sharp was the central figure in organizing the Taos Society of Artists. It was from Sharp that Couse, Ernest Blumenschein and Bert Geer Phillips first learned about Taos, and he is widely considered the spiritual leader of the Taos Founders.After studying at L'Ecole Des Beaux Arts, Couse continued to live and work in France, painting French countryside scenes that proved eminently saleable in Europe and the United States. He and Virginia had their first son, Kibbey, in the coastal village of Etaples in 1894. Couse also began painting portraits, which married his established academic style to the study and documentation of the human form. He kept a studio in New York that he occupied only during the winter exhibition season, and successfully sold a great number of paintings.In 1897, the Couse family moved to Oregon, just south of Virginia's childhood home, onto a ranch owned by her family. Couse built a studio and painted the Klikitat Indians of the area. Four years later, he moved to New York City permanently, drawing upon his sketches and paintings of the Northwest Indians to create Native American-themed works that proved quite popular with New York buyers. After the exhibition season, without any pressing engagements, Couse allowed himself to be persuaded to travel to Taos to visit Phillips and Blumenschein. He rented a house next door to Phillips' studio and began painted the people of the Taos Pueblo. He would spend every summer between 1902 and 1926 there, eventually establishing permanent residence there in 1927.Couse used the same two individuals, Ben Lujan and Geronimo Gomez, as the subjects for the majority of his paintings. Though the lines and colors of Couse's work are quite smooth, it is possible to see Lujan and Gomez age over time. Usually they are kneeling or squatting, engaged in a quotidian task such as preparing food or crafts, and are often lit by firelight. In the daylight scenes, Couse used a soothing palette and a softness of tone and detail to create peaceful scenes of the natives' relationship with nature. Though Couse's pieces are less ethnographically accurate than some of his contemporaries, his handling of his subjects is enormously generous and unforced, with a relaxed quality that impresses in its ability to convey concentration or rest with very little facial or muscular detail.In 1914, Couse painted his first piece for the Santa Fe Railway. Over the rest of his life, he would paint twenty-two canvases for the railway, usually included in their yearly calendar. Only two of the pieces were commissioned; the rest were chosen by the railway out of Couse's stock of existing work.E. I. Couse died in 1936 a successful and famous painter, whose gift to western art was significant and who is still recognized today as a major figure in the development of a significant school of American peinture.

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