Emile A. Gruppé and the Autumn Splendor of Vermont

Carol Lowrey

Here we are in the midst of autumn, a time of year when “October’s poplars are flaming torches lighting the way to winter.” Penned by Nova Bair, these words immediately bring to mind the landscapes of Emile A. Gruppé (1896-1978), a painter I had the opportunity to write about in 2008 when Spanierman Gallery organized a major exhibition of his work (Emile A. Gruppé (1896-1978)). Born in Rochester, New York, Gruppé was the son of the painter Charles P. Gruppé and the brother of the sculptor Karl Gruppé. After studying with his father and with influential teachers such as John F. Carlson and Charles Hawthorne, he went on to establish a reputation for his vigorously rendered portrayals of the harbors of Gloucester, Massachusetts, where he settled in 1929. However, Gruppé is also linked with the artistic tradition of Vermont, a region of mountains, lakes and rivers that he visited from the early 1930s and into the 1960s.

Although Gruppé spent a number of winters painting outdoors in the Green Mountain State, he made the majority of his trips in the fall, when dazzling foliage and golden sunshine would transform the countryside into a colorful mosaic of light and color. I love the way he captures this quality in The Hills of Vermont, a painting that also demonstrates his practice of interpreting shapes as broad masses to create what he called “the big effect.”* You see the same approach towards form and color in Old Buttonwood Trees, Vermont (both works date from the 1950s-60s), but here Gruppé takes the opportunity to explore the decorative potential of the buttonwoods––trees being among his favorite motifs and there are certainly plenty of them in Vermont. Look at the way he creates a “tree screen” by allowing the winding branches––replete with the final vestiges of fiery leafage––to move upwards and outside of the canvas, as if seeking the warm rays of the sun. His dynamic brushwork (very much in keeping with his outgoing personality) captures the anatomy of these ancient sentinels and suggests the animation within the natural world, ranging from the fluctuations of sunlight and shadow on the setting to the movement of clouds across the sky. Over the years, many artists have responded to the scenic beauty of Vermont, among them Aldro Thompson Hibbard, Willard Leroy Metcalf and Neil Drevitson; in my opinion, Gruppé’s autumnal views are the most robust and convey the most emotion, revealing his obvious pleasure in the process of painting and his ability evoke a sense of place, time of day and season.

*See his book, Gruppé on Color: Using Expressive Color to Paint Nature, ed. Charles Movalli (New York: Watson-Guptill Publications, 1979), 138.