Beaded Tobacco Bag

A founding member of the Taos Society of Artists, Eanger Irving Couse “was so involved with the Taos people that he conveyed a feeling of contact with their sacred rituals.” As art historian Mary Carroll Nelson describes, “For them, daily tasks, however repetitive, are made significant and dignified by their association with prayer, in the form of a song or an action." (The Legendary Artists of Taos, New York, 1980, p. 47) Couse’s striking Beaded Tobacco Bag painted circa 1910-13 epitomizes this sense of spirituality omnipresent throughout the daily life of the Taos Indians, heightened by the glowing firelight that illuminates the crouching Ben Lujan, one of Couse's favorite models.

Couse met Lujan on his first visit to Taos in 1902, when Lujan was just ten years old. The artist’s granddaughter Virginia Couse Leavitt explains, “Ben Lujan continued to pose for Couse and became more and more a part of the artist’s family. His father was an Apache named Sandoval (Star Road), a rebel sub war chief under Geronimo, who took a passing fancy to a young girl from Taos Pueblo, a girl of Pawnee ancestry...he nevertheless held many important positions at the Pueblo and would become one of the highly respected elders. According to his son, Eliseo, Ben viewed the Couses as his adoptive parents. He posed for Couse for thirty-four years until the artist’s death, and the close family ties lasted well into the next generations.” (Eanger Irving Couse: The Life and Times of an American Artist, 1866-1936, pp. 199-200)