E. Irving Couse

Eanger Irving Couse (Saginaw, Michigan, 1866 – Albuquerque, New Mexico, 1936) was an American painter and one of the founders of the Taos Society of Artists, whose first president he became. His work, focused on the Native peoples and landscapes of New Mexico and the American Southwest, made him a key figure in early twentieth-century painting of Native American subjects.

He trained at the Art Institute of Chicago and the National Academy of Design in New York, then in Paris, where he studied at the École des Beaux-Arts and the Académie Julian under William-Adolphe Bouguereau. He spent about ten years in France, painting mainly Normandy coast landscapes and, between 1893 and 1896, the streets and fisher folk of the Étaples art colony.

After returning to the United States he spent his summers in Taos, New Mexico, where he began painting the lives and culture of the Taos Pueblo. His first solo exhibition in 1891 already included Native American subjects, and in 1911 he was elected to the National Academy of Design. His best-known work, Elk-Foot of the Taos Tribe (1909), is held by the Smithsonian American Art Museum. His house and studio in Taos, where he later settled full time, are preserved as a historic site listed on the National Register of Historic Places.