The young boy crouched in the lower right foreground of this painting is Eliseo Lujan, the eldest son of Ben Lujan and Antonita Lucero of Taos Pueblo. Ben began modeling for Couse in 1902 at the age of twelve, and as he grew into adulthood, his wife and several of his children began to model as well.

The Couse Family Photo Collection at The Lunder Research Center houses thousands of photographs that Couse took during his lifetime, many of which portray Ben and other members of the Lujan family not only in poses for paintings but also in candid scenes of time spent at the Couse house over many decades. 

Eliseo in particular modeled regularly alongside his father and notes in a letter to Virginia Couse Leavitt in 1984:

“All of my early boyhood days were spent with the Couses. . . . I have so much joyful memories about the family.” He fondly recalled modeling for Couse and the long relationship between the two families. He writes, “Grandfather Couse and I had somewhat of a philosophy. He did not spoke [sic] my tongue and I did not spoke [sic] his, but when I was on the platform holding a pose – I guess that every so often he would watch me close and when I get figihty [sic] he would say, ‘rest, Chiefa-wallee,’ that meant to me to take about 3 or 5 minutes. I would scoot out to the porch and there I would find some goodies that grandmother had prepared for me. Ben was always around so he would caution me to go easy on the goodies.”