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

Artist Name:      Emile A. Gruppe'      Artist Dates:      1896 - 1978        Painting Title:    At the Wharf, Gloucester Painting Date:     Undated    Medium:            Oil on Canvas             Signature:           Signed          Provenance:       Private Collection       Condition:          Good, Rebacked Size Unframed:   12 x 15   Size Framed:       15 1/2 x 18 1/2        Frame Condition: New Reproduction Artist Best Price:  $33,000   Our Price:            SOLD

Curator's Comments: Gruppe was one of America’s most prolific painters. He himself records that he destroyed some 2,000 paintings and sketches. But his works are estimated at over 8,000, and that includes sketches later cannibalized for larger canvases, demonstration work for his extensive teaching (in the main at his own Gloucester summer school), and partial works supporting his three books. Moreover, Gruppe’s locations were highly limited. He painted in Gloucester, in Jeffersonville in Vermont and less so in Naples, Florida. Gloucester was the hub, and he even did the murals of the Gloucester National Bank. Another factor complicating his output is his tendency to virtually repeat his work from the same perspective, such as the wharf in Gloucester he favored or Gloucester’s so-called Italian docks—keep in mind that he painted in Gloucester for 53 years. We have seen many done from the exact perspective shown in the simple gem we offer, which is clearly a demonstration sketch done at one of Gruppe's saturday morning lessons. As Dave Nyhan writes: “The same locations appear many times, even very similar versions of the same scene.” Moreover our research has isolated a full-size version of this sketch, which we show here.      His commercial agenda probably kept him out of the National Academy, eventhough he won competitions there and has works hanging in the Art Institute of Chicago and the White House. As  Nyhan notes: “He gave demonstrations and charged for admittance. He was a showman from the first, and sold not only the painting he was working on but brushes and other equipment as well. Once he even sold his hat. This according to observers was the kiss of death to his desires to be admitted into the National Academy. While other artists were very discrete in advertising, Emile, at a demonstration, would put his asking price on the back of the canvas. He is said to have sold some canvases, even before he dabbed any paint on the front. During the Great Depression, when the demand for original art virtually evaporated, he turned to smaller pictures and reduced prices to get sales. He made no bones about it--he wanted to sell you a picture!” Our canvas comes from a Massachusetts physician with a summer home on Cape Ann, who told us that Gruppe would sell from a stack of small canvases he took with him, while painting a larger identical work as he sat perched above the piers, attracting passerby customers.

“If you want exacting details in a painting, than you might as well look at a photograph. I make an impression on a canvas and let one's imagination fill in the details. After all, I am creating a dream!"            --Emile A Gruppe'

Note how Gruppe' expands his sketch in a larger (30 x 36) format, which sold for $14,000  in 2002.

The miracle is that the mass of Gruppe’s work is all so good. His father was the artist, Charles Paul Gruppe, who took his family to Holland while Emile was a child. But the family returned to the U.S. in 1909 as the clouds of W.W.I gathered. It is said that at this time they added the accent to the Gruppe name to make it appear less German. The elder Gruppe found a studio in New York, and Emile's formal artistic training started at the Carnegie Art School, where the he studied under George Bridgeman. At the Arts Student League's summer school at Woodstock (NY), Gruppe studied under the great landscape artist John Fabian Carlson. He also spent time in Provincetown (MA) studying with Charles Hawthorne.  In later years, he summed up his education by saying that it was balanced on three legs: Drawing taught by Bridgeman, Values taught by Carlson and Color taught by Hawthorne. In 1925, after seeing an exhibition that featured the beautiful winter harbor scenes of Gloucester by Frederick Mulhaupt, the Gruppe father and son team headed to Cape Ann for a look that lasted forever. Until 1929 they shared a studio on Bearskin Neck in Rockport. Then Emile moved to nearby Gloucester, where he purchased an old school house on Rocky Neck, close to his beloved harbor scenes which he painted year after year after year. Nyhan observes: " Emile Gruppe was very quick and sure of himself. He would complete painting a large 30 by 36 canvas in less than two hours, sometimes one. He would begin by taking a charcoal stick and drawing a rough outline of his subject, sketching in the major elements. Then with swift and confident strokes he would begin to cover the drawing.  "Well, lets have a pink sky today" he would say and in would go the Rose Madder. "How about some masts, here" He would load his brush and Zip, Zip, he would drop the tip as quickly as possible, the faster, the straighter the line. And his masts were in." Gruppe is revered as an artist's artist--but his ultimate idea was that we were all artists. That is why his painting remain in endless demand--the small, the large--they are all the joyous expressions of a genius.

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