Eanger Irving Couse: The Life and Times of an American Artist, 1866-1936

401 Pages·2019·37.691 MB·English

by  Virginia Couse Leavitt

E a n g e r I r v i n g
Couse
The Life and Times
of an American Artist,
1866–1936
Virginia Couse Leavitt
Eanger Irving Couse
The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art
and Photography of the American West
B. Byron Price, General Editor
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E a nger I rv i ng
C ou s e
The Life and Times of an
American Artist, 1866–1936
Virginia Couse Leavitt
University of Oklahoma Press Norman
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The following images appear uncaptioned on the pages noted:
Page ii: Couse with Jerry Mirabal (left) and Ben Lujan (right) dressed for
The Eagle Dance, the subject of the 1922 Santa Fe Railway calendar, date
unknown. See page 258.
Page vi: (detail) E. I. Couse, Watching, c. 1934. See page 336.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Leavitt, Virginia Couse, author.
Title: Eanger Irving Couse : the life and times of an American artist, 1866–1936 /
Virginia Couse Leavitt.
Description: Norman : University of Oklahoma Press, 2019. | Series: The Charles M.
Russell Center series on art and photography of the American West ;
volume 34 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018004200 | ISBN 978-0-8061-6102-0 (hardcover : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Couse, E. Irving (Eanger Irving), 1866–1936. | Taos Society
of Artists—Biography. | Painters—United States—Biography.
Classification: LCC ND237.C765 L43 2019 | DDC 759.13 [B]—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018004200
Eanger Irving Couse: The Life and Times of an American Artist, 1866–1936 is
Volume 34 in The Charles M. Russell Center Series on Art and Photography of the
American West.
The paper in this book meets the guidelines for permanence and durability of
the Committee on Production Guidelines for Book Longevity of the Council on
Library Resources, Inc. ∞
Copyright © 2019 by the University of Oklahoma Press, Norman, Publishing
Division of the University. Manufactured in China.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in
a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise—except as permitted under
Section 107 or 108 of the United States Copyright Act—without the prior
permission of the University of Oklahoma Press.
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[ ]
This book is published with the generous assistance
of Erland and Lois Paff Bergen, Anthony and
Rene Donaldson, and Alan and Carol Ann Olson.
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Contents
Preface ix
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1. The Early Years: Saginaw and Chicago 3
˚
2. National Academy of Design and the Return to Saginaw 11
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3. Paris and the Académie Julian 23
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4. Romance and the Salon 41
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5. École des Beaux-Arts and the Paris Exposition 53
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6. A Summer at Concarneau 69
˚
7. Couse’s Marriage and a Schism in the Salon 79
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8. Cernay-la-Ville 93
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9. Washington 107
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10. Étaples 121
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11. The Professional Artist: From the Ranch to New York 143
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12. In Pursuit of a Summer Painting Ground 155
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13. Arrival in Taos 167
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14. Traveling the Southwest 181
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15. Development of the Taos Art Colony 197
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16. American Art, circa 1913 219
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17. The Taos Society of Artists 233
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18. Surviving and Prospering in Uncertain Times, 1915–1920 249
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19. The Santa Fe Railway Calendars 259
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20. The American Lithographic Company and THE Beacon
Blanket Company 275
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21. Newcomers to Taos during the War Years 283
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22. A Changing World: Taos and New York in the 1920s 293
˚
23. Home Sweet Home: Family Life at the Couse House 313
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24. The Final Years, 1930–1936 329
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Notes 343
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Bibliography 371
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Index 377
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Preface
This book has been thirty-four years in the making, a long time
by any standard. I was a late bloomer, having started graduate school after raising
two children. Although I received my BA in English literature and creative writing,
it was natural for me to turn later to art history for my master’s degree. I had, after
all, grown up surrounded by my grandfather’s paintings.
My father passed away soon after I received my MA in 1979. At that time I
discovered a large body of archival material in the family home in Taos and realized
that I had unknowingly been preparing myself for the task of organizing this
archive and putting it to good use. I am humbled that my brother, Irving, and sister,
Elizabeth, turned full control of the archive over to me.
We had acquired a key part of that archive as a result of a fortuitous event many
years earlier. The summer after my graduation from high school, I visited Walker
Kamm, my grandmother Virginia’s nephew, who was residing near San Francisco.
At that time he gave me a box of family letters, but after returning home, I went off
to college, and the box was stored away unopened. It did not resurface for thirty
years. When I started to read through the contents, I discovered that all 276 letters
had been written by my grandmother between 1882 and 1912, describing her and
Eanger Irving Couse’s life during those years in Paris, New York City, and Taos. It
was nothing less than a miracle that Walker Kamm had passed the letters along to
me. This correspondence became an indispensable primary source as I began work
on Couse’s biography. I am eternally grateful to Walker Kamm for turning this
precious resource over to me, and to “providence,” as my grandmother used to say,
for safely preserving this correspondence until it was time for its use.
Many people have helped me over the past thirty years in researching and
writing this book, and I would like to thank specifically several librarians,
archivists, researchers, colleagues, and mentors for their assistance. For many
years I haunted the library at the University of Arizona. Shirley Gish, a wonderful
research librarian there at that time, was a great help and became a good friend.
The staff of the Interlibrary Loan Department also stands out for helping to obtain
many obscure sources not in the library’s collection.
Trips to archives and to libraries around the country were rewarding. In

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