Offering to the Great Spirit

Additional Information

Literature:
Visions of the West: American Art from Dallas Private Collections, Rick Stewart, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, 1986: p. 38.

Exhibitions:
Visions of the West: American Art from Dallas Private Collections, Dallas Museum of Art, Dallas, TX, 1986

Exceptionally composed and meticulously arranged, Eanger Irving Couse’s Offering to the Great Spirit is a rare and unique work among the artist’s 1,500 catalogued paintings. Not only is the figure presented facing the viewer, an extraordinary deviation from Couse’s more common side profiles of figures, but the painting is also almost perfectly symmetrical with only the pipe bowl and several small details that are exclusive to one side of the painting. Although no photos of the painting on the easel exist, it is certainly possible Couse arranged the scene next to his easel on top of a large wooden table in front of a black backdrop pinned to the studio wall. The table was roughly 2 feet high, which allowed the artist to achieve the low angle that looks directly into the face of the reverent figure. The painting was part of Visions of the West: American Art from Dallas Private Collections a multi-lender exhibition at the Dallas Museum of Art in 1986. The Couse-Sharp Historic Site has catalogued the painting, completed in 1922, with the title Pipe Ceremony, and lists alternate titles as The Sacred Pipe and An Offering to the Great Spirit.

The painting exemplifies Couse’s classical way of posing his subjects. After Couse moved to Taos in 1906, the artist received several critical setbacks from art critics on the East Coast, who felt the artist was painting his figures “so posily and really artificially,” which was a product of his reliance on photographic references. More than a century later, Couse’s granddaughter, the late Virginia Couse Leavitt, came to his defense in her landmark book Eanger Irving Couse: The Life and Times of an American Artist, 1866-1936:

“Couse …[was] interested above all in the human form—an academic concern in itself—worked in a style firmly grounded in 19th-century precedents. Quiet, conservative, introspective, totally immersed in his own work—his personal style developed through a natural coalescence of temperament and training. He transferred the principles of nobility and beauty found in classical art to the American subject that he felt was most ideally suited for such treatment, the American Indian. The concept of ‘natural’ man and the ethnic costuming of the Indian lent themselves appropriately to the tradition of the classical nude, allowing Couse to take full advantage of the handsome, athletic physique of the Taos men. Commenting on the Taos Indians, Couse was quoted by a reporter as saying, ‘Taos being the most northerly of all the pueblos and adjacent to the tribes of the Plains Indians, its inhabitants have been in past times great warriors and have been compelled to withstand the advances of the marauding Ute, Apache and other tribes. This war making, as well as this hunt and chase, has developed a fine type of Indian manhood, which is a delight to the artist.’ Although his Indians appear idealized, they are in reality accurate portrayals of his models, a fact verified by his photographs. The motifs he painted, however, although true to the Indian spirit, were more conceptual than ethnographic, often bearing titles—such as The Evening Meal, Repose, The Lesson, and The Source—tied to 19th-century themes. In American Indians, he visualized universal qualities of humanity and spirituality with which he could empathize. Although the resultant images were romantic, they were rescued from sentimentality by the classical restraint of his style.”

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Please note that the first unframed photo is most accurate for color. Framed photographs are to show the frame and are not color corrected to the painting.

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