Artistic Career in The United States
After his return to the United States, Couse first lived in New York. He spent time in Taos, New Mexico during the summers. At the turn of the 19th century, the Southwest, and New Mexico in particular, attracted numerous artists and writers because it remained untouched by national expansion efforts dictated by the American policy of Manifest Destiny. The artists and writers of this era wanted to capture the last vestiges of the Old West before it disappeared altogether. During his time in New Mexico, Couse studied and painted the lives and culture of the Taos Indians, a Pueblo tribe. He began to show his paintings of Native American life and earned his first solo show in 1891.
In 1911 Couse was elected to the National Academy of Design. He also became active in the Taos art colony. In 1915, Couse was one of the six founding members of the Taos Society of Artists, and was elected first president. Another founding member was the artist J. H. Sharp, who adapted a chapel near Couse's house as a studio. Later Sharp built a combined house and studio on the land. The adjacent properties are recognized jointly as the Couse/Sharp Historic Site, and are preserved and operated by the Couse Foundation.
Among Couse's works in public galleries are Elk-Foot of the Taos Tribe (Smithsonian American Art Museum); The Forest Camp (Brooklyn Museum of Art); The Tom-Tom Maker (Lotos Club, New York); Medicine Fires (Montclair Gallery, New Jersey); and Shapanagons, a Chippewa Chief (Detroit Museum of Art).
Of these works, Elk-Foot of the Taos Tribe, painted in the summer of 1909, is considered Couse's masterwork. The painting was purchased for the United States national art collection by the well-known art collector William T. Evans and is now displayed in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Elk-foot, whose anglicized name was Jerry Mirabal, began posing for Couse in 1907 and was one of the painters favorite subjects because of his "physical beauty and ideal features."
Read more about this topic: E. Irving Couse
Famous quotes containing the words united states, artistic, career, united and/or states:
“In the United States, it is now possible for a person eighteen years of age, female as well as male, to graduate from high school, college, or university without ever having cared for, or even held, a baby; without ever having comforted or assisted another human being who really needed help. . . . No society can long sustain itself unless its members have learned the sensitivities, motivations, and skills involved in assisting and caring for other human beings.”
—Urie Bronfenbrenner (b. 1917)
“All ambitions are lawful except those which climb upward on the miseries or credulities of mankind. All intellectual and artistic ambitions are permissible, up to and even beyond the limit of prudent sanity. They can hurt no one.”
—Joseph Conrad (1857–1924)
“I seemed intent on making it as difficult for myself as possible to pursue my “male” career goal. I not only procrastinated endlessly, submitting my medical school application at the very last minute, but continued to crave a conventional female role even as I moved ahead with my “male” pursuits.”
—Margaret S. Mahler (1897–1985)
“The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.”
—C. Wright Mills (1916–1962)
“I would like to be the first ambassador to the United States from the United States.”
—Barbara Mikulski (b. 1936)