Two of the founders of the Taos Art Colony and Taos Society of Artists, Eanger Irving Couse (1866‱936) and Joseph Henry Sharp (1859‱953), shared many things in common. Both were from the Midwest †Couse originally from Michigan and Sharp from Ohio †and each had studied in Europe and brought to New Mexico the academic painting tradition he had experienced in Paris.
By 1909, the two artists had bonded in Taos, becoming next-door neighbors near the Plaza on Kit Carson Road, their studios separated by a massive adobe wall. They remained friends and colleagues for the rest of their careers.
Launching the Couse Foundation’s centennial celebration of the year Couse and Sharp became neighbors, the Harwood Museum of Art is presenting two revelatory exhibitions, “Kindred Spirits and the Adobe Connection: E.I. Couse and J.H. Sharp” and “A Painter and his Camera: Model Studies by E.I. Couse,” both on view through October 18.
The first show features paintings by both artists, along with artifacts depicted in Couse paintings and relevant sketchbooks and photographs. Visitors thus have an opportunity to gauge the creative processes and compare the styles of Couse and Sharp.
The second exhibition, drawn from around 10,000 photographs in the Couse family archives, showcases about 20 camera studies Couse undertook in preparing for easel paintings. Couse’s meticulous preparation and application of the Beaux-Arts principles he learned in Paris resulted in views of Native Americans and their surroundings that are of enduring quality and interest.
Couse and Sharp “are the most dedicated academics of the Taos artists, and their paintings reflect those late Nineteenth Century European studies,” observes Jina Brenneman, Harwood curator. She notes that both were prolific, successful artists who started painting Native American subjects in the Northwest around the turn of the century and settled in Taos shortly thereafter. Both painters admired Indian arts and crafts and assembled extensive Native American collections.
Underscoring the broader implications of Couse and Sharp’s Taos work, art historian Marie Wilkins of Furman University, who will lecture at the Harwood on October 16, points out that “The Beaux-Arts tradition never left&⁛them]. Paris determined how Couse and Sharp painted. In turn,&⁛they], along with their Taos colleagues, transformed American art. What they learned in Paris didn’t stay in Paris, but unfolded into a rich and diverse Taos panorama.”
In line with academic tradition, Couse and Sharp’s paintings were based on careful preparatory steps seeking to place realistic detail at the service of distinctive subjects. Taos artists, particularly Couse, made extensive use of photography, props and observation in creating pictures.
Couse, born in Saginaw, Mich., grew up among Chippewa Indians of the region. Early on in France he painted austere peasant subjects, imbuing rural vignettes with a simplicity and dignity that reflected lives based in nature and the land. In 1893, after seeing a religious ceremony in a French village, he assembled a group of locals, posed them for photographs and created an oil sketch before completing a large composition, “La Toussaint a Enocq,” 1893. In the exhibition, the preliminary views displayed alongside the final canvas show how closely the young artist adhered to what he saw.
Couse found the similar noble attributes while observing Northwest Indian tribes in Washington state, as exemplified by “Columbia River Indian Chief,” 1897, a broadly brushed profile of a poised Indian leader.
As his granddaughter, Virginia Couse Leavitt, and her husband, Ernest Leavitt, moving forces behind the Couse Foundation, point out, Couse “loved Native American cultures and that’s just always what he wanted to paint.” Couse worked within the European academic traditions he studied, 1882‱891, in America and in Paris, especially at the Academie Julian.
While working in New York City, Couse ran into fellow painter Ernest L. Blumenschein, who suggested that if he wanted to paint Native Americans, he should try Taos. Two weeks later, Couse and his wife headed West. They found a Taos Art Colony, anchored by Blumenschein, Bert Geer Phillips and Sharp, was in the works.
“Taos was just the perfect place” for these Beaux-Arts painters, say the Leavitts. “They&⁛made] pictures that had never been done before. These were truly American paintings, different from European ones, and their Native American subjects gave them a unique freshness.”
The current exhibition is special because it displays historical artifacts and preliminary photos and sketches alongside paintings in which they are featured. It is “a unique opportunity,” say the Leavitts, “to see how the artists approached their work.” Couse made constant use of photographs in creating typical canvases showing Pueblo Indians demonstrating their skills hunting, making moccasins, playing the flute and other activities.
“The Turkey Hunter,” circa 1917‱8,” for example, was closely based on photos and sketches that preceded the oil painting.
Through his paintings, Couse said, he hoped “to remove the misconception and contempt in which the Indian has been held, and to show that they are human beings worthy of consideration and a place in the sun.” Typical of his efforts in the cause are canvases in which Native Americans demonstrate their humanity and skills, such as “Call of the Flute,” 1913, “Indian Artist,” 1916, and “The Moccasin Maker,” 1920.
Like many of the Taos artists, Couse was intrigued by the traditions and mystique of the Taos Pueblo. In “The Cacique,” 1932, he posed a handsome Indian spiritual leader above a portion of the adobe community. In spite of this proud, stoic figure, Couse had grave doubts about the future of tribal life, suggesting his belief in the idea of the vanishing race of “doomed” Native Americans.
Both Couse and Sharp were charter members of the Taos Society of Artists (TSA), formed in 1915 to promote the members and their work. All the other original participants, Oscar E. Berninghaus, Blumenschein, W. Herbert (Buck) Dunton and Phillips, had also trained in Europe and brought an academic mindset to Taos. After 12 years of success, during which members gained national prominence, the TSA disbanded, its mission accomplished.
The Couse photography exhibition underscores the artist’s practice of using photos taken with his 5-by-7-inch format camera of live models from the Taos Pueblo in preparing for major paintings. He found photography a useful technical aid, especially for recording natural settings and poses. Couse posed models either in his studio or at outdoor locations, often conceiving an idea and developing a composition as he went along. He made sketches of photographed images that best suited the picture he had in mind. Photos were gridded to aid in transferring the posed figure onto the canvas with charcoal.
Couse then blocked out the entire composition, using paint to indicate the values and basic color scheme. He would then pose the model again and continue to develop details of color, texture, light, shadow and skin tones. Film and prints were processed in a simple darkroom in his Taos studio. The exhibition’s documentation shows the vital role that photography played, as a memory aid, in facilitating depiction of the subtle nuances of a pose, and providing a fresh source of inspiration and new compositions. Photos were integral elements in Couse’s effort to represent the inner spirit of Indians performing everyday activities.
Not far from the Harwood Museum is the remarkably well-preserved Couse/Sharp Historic Site, the adobe complex where Couse and Sharp shared a common wall, starting in 1909. The Couse portion, maintained by the Couse Foundation, is perhaps the most completely preserved artist’s home/studio in the country, thanks in large part to having stayed in the Couse family for the last 100 years. It is included in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s Historic Artists Homes and Studios group.
The Couse-Sharp compound consists of Couse’s home and studio, Sharp’s attached “Studio of the Copper Bell” (the bell still hangs high overhead) and the newer, larger studio Sharp used after 1915. While most of the contents of Sharp’s studios have been removed, they remain pristine on the outside.
The Couse portion has been maintained with its original furnishings intact †numerous pieces of antique furniture, paintings on the wall, grand dining room table, ample living room with a large stone fireplace festooned with Indian artifacts and a wraparound porch overlooking a beautiful garden with panoramic views of Taos Valley.
The highlight is the studio, added soon after the Couses moved in. The spacious workplace is replete with an easel with an unfinished canvas, the artist’s painting chair, all manner of painting equipment, groups of Native American artifacts, other props used by Couse in his paintings and a corner darkroom. There is one of the 23 paintings Couse created annually for Santa Fe Railroad prints that made him famous.
The old cliché that it looks like the artist has just stepped out really applies in this meticulously preserved workspace.
The Leavitts, who have worked for years to keep Couse’s legacy alive, have formed a foundation to maintain the home/studio, which is open for tours by appointment in the summer. Since it so closely conveys a sense of the manner in which pioneering Taos artists lived and worked, this is a special treasure vital to save for posterity.
Sharp, Couse’s soulmate and neighbor, was a distinctive figure and accomplished painter, who helped convey memorable images of Western Indians and their activities to the rest of the country. Born in Bridgeport, Ohio, raised in Cincinnati, and trained in Paris, Munich and Antwerp, he started out in Montana painting portraits of surviving Plains Indian warriors from the Indian Wars, as well as scenes documenting what he believed to be a rapidly disappearing native culture. His Absarokee cabin, originally at the Crow Agency, is preserved today on the grounds of the Buffalo Bill Historical Center in Cody, Wyo.
Around the turn of the century, Sharp’s Indian portraits, such as his dignified “Crow Goes to the Otter Ground,” circa 1900, found ready private buyers and were purchased by the Smithsonian Institution’s Bureau of Ethnology. They were identified as historically accurate, but Sharp clearly intended to be known as an artist, not an ethnologist/historian.
Sharp worried a lot about the federal government’s heavy-handed interference in tribal life, such as a rule requiring Native American men to wear their hair short. He was concerned, moreover, about the imposition of Euro-American values on Indians through policies that sought to turn tribes from a life based on hunting to one based on agriculture. That rarely worked, leading to tribal dependency on the government for food, clothing and housing.
When Sharp relocated to Taos in 1909, he found a stable pueblo society whose material culture was similar to that of Plains Indians. Deeming Taos Indians less interesting subjects than Plains Indians, however, he began to concentrate less on historical accuracy and more on works of art that conveyed the exotic and expressive. Subjects of most paintings, like “Taos Indian Portrait,” undated, tended to be generalized rather than specific.
Ensconced in the Luna Chapel, sharing a wall with Couse, Sharp established the “adobe connection.” As Harwood officials put it, “This wall effectively united the two artists in fact as well as in spirit.” In 1915, he built a large studio with good north light at the rear of the property. Sharp’s painting of his sitting room suggests its warm ambience, enhanced by Native American decorations and pictures on the walls.
As a charter member, Sharp participated in get-togethers of the Taos Society of Artists, which often took place at what is now the Couse/Sharp Historic Site.
Like Couse, Sharp admired the artistry (“Chant to the War Bonnet,” undated) and dignified demeanor of Native Americans, using favorite models from the Taos Pueblo, notably Jerry Mirabel and Ben Luhan. Sharp also used photography in developing portraits and for documenting paintings of Indian life.
As vintage photographs reveal, both Couse and Sharp dressed their Taos models in Plains costumes †traditional Native American garb of beaded buckskins and moccasins †albeit posing them with Southwestern pottery and artifacts.
Virginia Couse Leavitt, the Couse granddaughter who is an art historian, recalls the Sharps as warm, friendly neighbors; she often took “Uncle Henry” a bouquet of pansies from the Couse garden.
Sharp, who was deaf, never let his disability hold him back. He relied on hand signals and quick sketches to communicate with Indians. Leavitt, who assumed that he read lips, remembers his distinctive, but “perfectly understandable,” voice, and that a note pad was sometimes passed back and forth.
She recalls that when tourists discovered Taos as an art colony, they would go to various studios to meet artists and view their work. “They became very disruptive at times, so various ways were devised to cut down on the interruptions,” she says.
In Sharp’s case, he relied on his little dog to indicate whether the visitor was a serious buyer or not. When someone would knock on Sharp’s studio door, the dog would raise one of his ears if the visitor had money and the other ear if he did not. She continues, “One day John D. Rockefeller came to town and knocked on Sharp’s studio door. Unfortunately, Sharp’s dog raised the wrong ear, so Rockefeller went next door to Couse’s studio and bought a number of paintings. Couse good naturedly held that over Sharp!”
These intriguing exhibitions remind us of the important roles Couse and Sharp played in applying academic art to Southwestern subjects, and conveying images of the indigenous culture to the rest of the country. It constitutes an important chapter in American art history.
The Harwood Museum of Art is at 238 Ledoux Street. For information, 575-758-9826 or www.harwoodmuseum.org . The Couse/Sharp Historic Home and Studio is at 146 East Kit Carson Road. For information, 575-751-0369 or www.cousefoundation.org .
