Eanger Irving Couse / Portfolio

“Pottery Vendor”, 1916, oil on canvas, 45 ½ x 34 ½ inches, The Eugene B. Adkins Collection at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art, the University of Oklahoma, Norman, and the Philbrook Museum of Art, Tulsa, Oklahoma.
“Make Up Time”, c. 1925, oil on canvas board, 12 x 16 inches, (#78.939F), Rockwell Museum of Art, Corning New York.
“The First American”, 1928, oil on fabric support, 46 x 35 inches, courtesy Harrison Eiteljorg, The Eiteljorg Museum of American Indians and Western Art, Indianapolis, Indiana.
“The Quiver Maker”, 1918, oil on canvas, 24 x 29 inches, Panhandle Plains Historical Museum, Canyon, Texas, Johnie Griffin Collection, 1501/62.
“A Vision of the Past”, 1913, oil on canvas, 70 ¼ x 70 ¼ inches, 919-O-501, The Butler Institute of American Art, Youngstown, Ohio.
“Tom-tom Player – Firelight”, oil on canvas, c. 1920, 12 ¼1/8 x 16 ¼ in. (#79.173F), Rockwell Museum of Art, Corning New York.

Couse was a romantic realist. His famous firelight and moonlight paintings from New Mexico were a result of his early interest in Tonalism. In 1886 he entered the Académie Julian in Paris where his training led to his lifelong focus on figure painting. From his mentor, Wm. Bouguereau, he learned the value of careful planning through the use of preparatory studies. From the naturalist painters of the period he learned the value of photographs as an aide to memory.

Although he was a studio painter, he made hundreds of plein air oil sketches in order to retain a good color sense.