09-24-201009-25-2010
Skinner Auctions
Skinner AuctionsBoston MA
2517BBoston
September 24, 2010 12:00 PMCalender
433

Eanger Irving Couse (American, 1866-1936) Camp at Night

Sell one like this
$77,025$65,000
Auction: American & European Works of Art - 2517BLocation: BostonDate / Time: September 24, 2010 12:00PM

Description:

Eanger Irving Couse (American, 1866-1936)

Camp at Night, 1923
Signed "E.I.COUSE.N-A-" l.l.
Oil on artist board, 12 x 16 in. (30.5 x 40.6 cm),in a Couse-designed Taos Arts & Crafts frame (under glass).
Condition: Minor losses.

Provenance: Private New England collection.

Literature: Falk, Peter, ed., The Annual Exhibition Record of the National Academy of Design, 1901-1950, Madison: Sound View Press, 1990, p. 147.

Exhibitions: National Academy of Design Annual Exhibition, March 16-April 15, 1923, exh. no. 260.

N.B. We wish to thank Virginia Couse Leavitt for her assistance with cataloguing the lot. The work will be included in her forthcoming catalogue raisonne on the artist.

The Couse-designed frame is significant to the present work, and reflects the Arts and Crafts philosophy of beautiful utility. Though many of the Taos school artists chose hand-carved frames for their works, Couse is one of the few that worked closely with framemakers to create distinctive motifs and finishes "mated" for particular paintings. Couse likely derived his highly-stylized motifs from Southwestern Indian pottery and other artifacts that he collected (1). He was also known to finish his frames with earth tones, "often adding washes of color through the interstices of the carving to bring the frame into closer harmony with the particular lighting in the painted image." (2) The frame on the present work closely resembles one designed by Couse for "Indian Drinking from a Lake," c. 1911-1925, in the Cincinnati Art Museum collection. Both share deep, incised lines and abstracted fan-shaped motifs.

As a pictorial device, Couse favored single-figure compositions tightly cropped. In the way that his frames attract the viewer's attention through their bold patterning, it may be argued that his frames truly "contain" rather than expand the pictorial space, imparting a greater intimacy to the moments depicted.

(1) Mills, Sally. "From Parlors to Pueblos: Frames for the American West, 1855-1925." The Gilded Edge: The Art of the Frame. San Francisco: Chronicle Books, 2000, p. 120.
(2) Ibid.

Estimate $50,000-70,000

Three areas of paint losses with some adhesion to the glass: 1) A 1 x 1-1/2 in. area in u.r. corner with scattered dots of loss and adhesion to glass. 2) Diagonal area on left side measuring 10 in. high and 2 in. wide running from the top of the composition down to the left of the fire, with losses and adhesions, particularly in the turquoise and darker blue pigment. 3) A triangular area at the base of the fire measuring about 1-1/2 in. with losses and adhesion of the yellow, orange, and gray pigment. There is also a small area (measuring 1/2 in high) of scattered losses c.r. edge.

Keywords

Irving Couse, New England, National Academy of Design, Sound View Press, Virginia Couse Leavitt, National Academy of Design Annual Exhibition, Cincinnati Art Museum, pictorial device