Vintage Oil Painting After E. Irving Couse, Autumn Moon, in Heavy Black Frame

A glowing autumn scene painted after Autumn Moon, the 1927 work by the American artist Eanger Irving Couse. A young Native American man kneels on the bank of a stream to draw water in his cupped hands, a white feather in his hair and a red sash at his shoulder, while cottonwoods blaze gold behind him and pale aspens catch the light to the right. A small moon hangs in the blue sky at the top left.

Couse (1866 to 1936) trained in Paris before settling in Taos, New Mexico, in 1902, where he became a founding member and first president of the Taos Society of Artists. He painted the people of Taos Pueblo for more than thirty years, and his original Autumn Moon, a large moonlit canvas, now belongs to the El Paso Museum of Art. This is a skilled copy rather than an original, and the painter has reproduced Couse's signature, E I Couse, in the lower right corner along with the composition. They have turned his wide night scene into an upright one and flooded it with autumn colour, laying the paint on thickly so the yellows and turquoise blues have real texture up close.

Painted in oil on canvas laid on board, it measures 43 x 38 cm in its frame. The heavy black painted frame has a deep, rounded profile and a narrow gilt slip, and it gives the bright colours real drama. The black paint is worn at the corners and along the edges, where a red undercoat and bare wood show through, and the brown paper backing has some old spotting and an early paper label.

The rich ochre and turquoise palette looks wonderful against white or warm plaster walls, and the dark frame brings depth to a pale room. Hang it in a study, above a fireplace with brass candlesticks, or prop it on a dresser with dried grasses and green glass, as in our photographs. It would also make a striking anchor for a gallery wall of mixed landscapes.