Original Oil Painting of Firelight Scene [SOLD]

When we received this painting, we asked Virginia Couse Leavitt, granddaughter of E. I. Couse and curator of the Couse estate records and collections, for her authentication. We received the following letter from her. The original letter will be provided to the purchaser of the painting.

The painting is a classic Couse firelight subject showing an Indian poking the embers of a fire in an adobe fireplace. I have been unable to trace any records of this particular painting in the Couse Archive, so I am unable to supply you with a title or date at this time. However, everything about the painting is right, the subject, the brushwork, the way the forms are handled, the palette, and the signature. It is a very nice example of a small Couse oil on an 8 x 10 inch format, painted sometime between 1920 and his death in 1936.

The photos you sent show the painting in its original frame. This frame was made and carved by Couse himself. In the late 1920s Couse gave up his winter studio in New York in order to live in Taos year around. He still needed frames but no longer had access to his New York frame makers, so he began to make his own frames by combining moldings in various profiles and decorating them with simple chip carved designs. He then painted them with bronze powder.

The painting is in original excellent condition. It is signed in lower left. At the urging of Ernest Blumenschein, Couse first visited Taos in 1902. He had studied and worked in France for many years, then lived in Washington for a time starting in the 1890s. After visiting Taos in 1902, Couse was enamored and decided to stay which he did and he painted the Taos Indians for the remainder of his life.

Provenance: Original property of Dr. and Mrs. Harold Dunbar Corbusier who had a home in Santa Fe on the Old Santa Fe Trail. It was passed down by them to their daughter, Frances Corbusier O’Brien, who, in turn, passed it down to her son, Dr. David S. O’Brien, the current owner. It has been in this same family for three generations.