344 Call of the Flute (The Love Call)

SOLD
Winning Bid Undisclosed
This item SOLD at 2017 Apr 08 @ 14:49UTC-7 : PDT/MST
Category Art
Auction Currency USD
Start Price NA
Estimated at 125,000.00 - 175,000.00 USD
Call of the Flute (The Love Call)
Artist: Couse, E.I.Date of Birth: 1866-1936
Medium: Oil on canvas
Dimensions: 35 x 46 inches
Signed: Signed lower right
Verso:

Call of the Flute, painted in 1908 and exhibited extensively thereafter, stems from the artist’s abiding interest in the customs and ritual aspects of the lives of the natives of Taos. Native American courtship—its music, secrecy, sacredness—appears in a number of his canvases, though few have the scale and offer the innate aesthetic pleasures of this work. Echoing the agrarian myths of Ancient Greece—think of Pan playing his pipes—the young man seduces the maiden with the music of his flute. Shyly, she considers the proposition his melody frames. Couse deftly handles this secluded glade, the rocks, the latticework of branches, adapting pointillist technique to make the paint shimmer. But this is an ongoing tug of amorous war. The path, the wedge of sky, and the small pond divide the man and woman. He might have to dig deeper into his repertoire. Call of the Flute appears to be framed in an original Couse frame. These wide, deeply carved frames were fabricated for Couse, after his own designs, by either Henry Schultheis or L. Vigor in New York.