Western Romance Painter E.I. Couse Expressed Passion For Frontier Environment In Romantic Tableaus

Eanger Irving Couse first became fascinated with Indians as a child growing up in Saginaw, Mich. It proved to be no passing fancy, but a lifelong interest.

Couse felt compelled to visually tell their story.

He first studied art at the Chicago Institute, then the National Academy of Design in New York, and eventually sailed to Paris for more training, as many promising artists did in the late 1800s.

Although he learned the art of landscape at the Academie Julian in Paris, he never lost his original passion. But before he could combine the two, he found Washington roots while in Paris. It was there he met, fell in love with and married a fellow art student, Virginia Walker.

Virginia and her family, who ranched along the Columbia River in Klickitat County, offered him the opportunity to fulfill his dreams. Dreams of painting Indians: the people, their environment, their lifestyle.

In 1889, Virginia wrote to her mother from Paris about her new husband: “Mr. C and I had such a long talk about you this morning. I was telling him all about the ranch. He thinks he could paint some fine pictures out there… . Are there any Indian camps around now or are they all gone? Mr. Couse wants to paint some Indian pictures.”

And paint them he did.

“E.I. Couse: A Northwest Romantic” is an exhibit of oils and watercolors the world-renowned artist created while living at the ranch at various times near the turn of the century. It opens Wednesday at the Cheney Cowles Museum. The pieces, along with a sketchbook and photo studies, have been gathered from private collections.

Although Indians were his focus, he also painted Northwest landscapes.

A reporter for a Portland newspaper wrote in 1904: “Mr. Couse’s Oregon sheep scenes are wonderfully lifelike and pretty, and the artist, in showing them to the visitor, evinces an unmistakable fondness for these pastoral scenes.”

Passengers on the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad a hundred years ago were very familiar with Couse’s work, featured as it was for years on the railroad calendars.

He is best known to the world as a member of the famous early 20th-century Taos Society of Artists, and he has paintings in major art galleries throughout Europe and America. But his Eastern Washington connections helped provide the foundation for what he became.

His passion for Native Americans was deepened through his acquaintance with Northwest Indians, and he wanted to tell their story to the world through art.

Couse’s visual narrative of the Indian legacy shows them before the battles and ever-expanding westward movement that forever changed their world. His paintings do not show them as beaten; there’s no “Trail’s End” in Couse art.

“He’s known for his romantic depiction of an idealized West of the past, particularly his notion of the idyllic life of the noble Indian living in harmony with nature,” Glenn Mason, Cheney Cowles Museum director, wrote in a brochure for the exhibit.

The museum owns such an image, which has hung in Mason’s office. The painting, once owned by Louis Davenport, was a gift from the hotel owner’s son.

It is of a father and son sitting on a riverbank watching birds take flight.

“It’s a nice, quieting scene,” Mason said. It’s the kind of painting in which a viewer can lose himself.

“E.I. Couse: A Northwest Romantic” came about because of that painting.

A few years back, a visitor helping set up an exhibit noticed it and said he knew a distant relative of the artist who had a Couse painting.

That man was then-state Rep. Phil Dyer of Issaquah.

Conversations ensued, and before long, Mason found himself contacting Couse family members who still own paintings by their ancestor. He found the man’s granddaughter, Virginia Couse Leavitt, keeper of the Couse Family Archives in Taos and Tuscon, who invited him to visit and encouraged him to mount a show dedicated to the artist’s Northwest pieces.

The exhibit, in turn, has led to a family reunion spearheaded by the museum. Also, Leavitt will give a lecture about her grandfather on Wednesday after a public reception.

A broad spectrum of descendents, three branches down the genealogy tree, own Couse art and have it hanging in their homes. They have talked to Leavitt on the telephone but have never met her nor other shirttail cousins.

A Couse-Wagner family reunion will be tonight at the museum, which might be a first.

“I’m touched by that kind of human spirit,” said Mason, warming to the idea of using art and history to bring people together.

The human nature of Couse’s in-laws also strikes Mason as extraordinary.

In an era when women’s education was secondary, if at all, the Walkers - Catherine and Wellington - sent their daughters to college and allowed Virginia to study abroad. And when Virginia married Couse without her parents having met him, they trusted her judgment enough to embrace him and welcome him into the family, Mason said.

In fact, they built him a studio/ house on the ranch where the couple lived and Eanger painted.

“It’s wonderful to have people around nurturing you, encouraging you, even when it’s not a popular thing to do,” he said.

And the bolstering was appreciated. In an 1891 letter to a friend, Virginia wrote:

“I think my whole family were made especially to appreciate Mr. Couse. His nature needed to fall in to a sympathetic surrounding like that to live and develop, I think. …

“You don’t know how grateful I am that you, every one, have such large souls for art etc. You know how Father & Mother are, especially Mother, loves it and how they have proved their superiority over most people by the way in which they have taken Mr. Couse in & understood him from the first and made him feel they understood his ambition & were in such sympathy with him.

“You may not appreciate the fact, but those things are life to a nature like his.”

That kind of phenomenal support is vital for anyone - artist, writer, museum director - to succeed, Mason said.

MUSEUM EXHIBITION “E.I. Couse: A Northwest Romantic” will be on display at the Cheney Cowles Museum, 2316 W. First, Wednesday through March 14. A public reception will be from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, with a special lecture at 7:30 by Virginia Couse Leavitt, the artist’s granddaughter.