American Masterpieces from Dryads Green Gallery (Please Scroll Down--Catalogue is Alphabetical by Artist Last Name)

Artist Name:          Charles P. Gruppe' Artist Dates:           1860-1940 Painting Title:        The First Snow Painting Date:        Undated Medium:               Oil on Canvas Signature:              Signed Lower Left Provenance:           Private Collection Condition:              Excellent-Relined Size Unframed:      30 x 36 Size Framed:          38 x 44 Frame Condition:    Mint Reproduction Artist Best Price:     $13,800 Our Price:               SOLD

Curator's Comments: Charles P. Gruppe’ died in Rockport, Massachusetts, on September 30, 1940 at his studio. He was 80 and had been painting in Rockport for 15 years, along with wintering in his New York studio. His son, the master American painter Emile Gruppe’  (one of four who all went into the arts) died in 1978 at 78. Until 1929, the two Gruppe’s, father and son shared a studio on Bearskin Neck in Rockport. Then, in 1929, Emile decided make his own fortune and moved to nearby Gloucester where he purchased an old school house on Rocky Neck to use as a live-in studio. Emile painted in the Rockport area for 53 years, wintering in Florida and in Jeffersonville, Vermont, and building an impressive career that went even beyond his father’s greatness. Then there are two grandchildren working today as active living painters, which tells you that the legacy of Charles P. Gruppe’ was to painting itself. Despite a stern European visage, Charles Gruppe’ was said to have a sunny and optimistic disposition. He had little formal education and no visible advantages in his early youth. What he did have was a strong love of painting which seemed inborn to him, and he achieved success as a painter, first in Holland and then in America.

It is important to note that Charles, the father, had all ready built a significant career in Holland, before coming to America just before WWI, when the family also added the accent to the Germanic Gruppe which became Gruppe’. He was born in Picton, Canada, September 3, 1860, and at ten, moved with his family to Rochester, N.Y., after the death of his father. Interested in painting from an early age, he worked in a sign shop to provide family support. At twenty-one, he sailed steerage to Europe, settling in Holland, after travel in Germany, and built a home and studio in the little fishing village of Katwyk ann Zee and painted much of his European work in the vicinity of that town. While in Holland, his skill at subtle coloration and careful draftsmanship became so identified with the Dutch School of painting that he was elected to the exclusive Pulchre Studio in the Hague, something highly unique for an American. Gruppe spent over twenty years in Holland, becoming a distinguished artist and ultimately being patronized by the royalty of Europe. He was honored with numerous awards and medals, including gold medals at Paris and Rouen, and also at the World's Fair in St. Louis in 1903. Gruppe' returned to America, not to Rochester but to New York City, where he took an apartment/studio at Carnegie Hall. There he painted and supervised Emile’s (born in Rochester) education as a painter and mixed with fellow artists as a member of the Salmagundi Club, where he was known as “Clever Dutch.” The story is that in 1925, after seeing an exhibition in New York that featured the beautiful winter harbor scenes of Gloucester by Frederick Mulhaupt, the Gruppe’ father and son team headed to Cape Ann, to see for themselves. "Mulhaupt got the smell of Gloucester on canvas," Emile had said, and he and his father remained. Charles Gruppe’s paintings can be found in the best collections of Europe and America—but whether Emile ever got the better of him is a difficult question rooted in taste. While Emile was a superb colorist with an  impressionistic style, we prefer Gruppe’ Sr., who has the advantage of his son when it comes to being in the Smithsonian.

It is important to note that the American masters Frank Duveneck, Merritt Chase and Twachtman were all in Munich at various times between 1874 and 1876, even establishing the American Artists of Munich club. Gruppe' Sr., who was there later, was also clearly influenced by the Munich landscape style, with its silver-grey skies, and the same treatment is at work in the Dutch school of his time. But in America, the Munich influence worked against Gruppe Sr. in Rockport and Gloucester. It was his son Emile's work that captured the colors of the American scene with a superior sense of their interplay. Clearly a comparison, given the same harbor subjects, shows Gruppe' Sr. with an older, less impressionistic sense of light. Where Gruppe Sr. excelled in a more subtly constructed landscape like First Snow, certainly one of his very best, and of which we show a very close companion, The Footbridge for comparison.

Gruppe's The Foot bridge, brought $10,000 in 2003

These works display an incredible harmony of grey, green, earth-brown  and silver that resonates in the harmony of their triad of subject. Gruppe' Sr. here gives us the water in its many manifestations, the meadow and trees (another set or permutations), the stony land ranging from grey into earth tones and the human element comprised of weathered wood. There is no hostility, only a sharp clarity that shows the human construct subject to the multiplicity, strength and direction taken by the natural elements. These are among the finest American landscapes ever--and we are very, very proud to offer First Snow certainly one of the most masterful paintings of Gruppe's artistic career.

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