The Peace Pipe

Eanger Irving Couse

1901 · Oil on canvas · The American Wing

Couse may have first developed an interest in Native Americans and their cultural rituals while growing up in Saginaw, Michigan. While he was a student at the Académie Julian in Paris, he learned of Taos, New Mexico. Wishing to draw inspiration from that isolated town and its Indigenous inhabitants, Couse established a summer studio in Taos in 1902, shortly after his return to the United States. He also studied and painted Native Americans of the Northwest coast along the Columbia River. "The Peace Pipe," which depicts three men around a small campfire in the woods, displays Couse's academic training in its attention to nearly-nude figures as well as his interest in the effects of firelight.

Artist

Eanger Irving Couse

Date

1901

Medium

Oil on canvas

Culture

American

Department

The American Wing

Credit line

Gift of Mrs. Adolph Obrig, in memory of her husband, 1917