biographie de Richard Buckner GRUELLE (1851-1914)

Birth place: Cynthiana, KY

Death place: Indianapolis, IN

Addresses: Indianapolis; Norwalk, CT

Profession: Landscape painter, writer

Studied: self-taught.

Exhibited: Denison Hotel, 1894; Five Hoosier Painters, Chicago, 1894; AIC, 1897; Louisiana Purchase Expo, St. Louis, 1904; Indianapolis & New Canaan (solos).

Member: Indianapolis AA; New Canaan Soc. Artists; Soc. Western Artists; Knockers Club

Work: Indianapolis Public Library; Herron AI; Richmond (IN) Public Gallery; Indianapolis Mus. Art (The Canal, Early Morning Effect," 1894); Indiana Memorial Union, Indiana Univ. ("Home of the Artist"); James Whitcomb Riley Mem. Assoc. ("The Old Swimmin' Hole"). "

Comments: Gruelle was apprenticed to a house and sign painter as a young man. He initially practiced portraiture but was best known as a landscape painter in tradition of Barbizon school, having taken up landscape painting in oil and watercolor in Indianapolis, c.1882. He painted for several seasons during the1890s in Washington, DC and held several exhibitions there. Gruelle was a member of the reknowned Hoosier Group" which included T. C. Steele, William Forsyth, J. Ottis Adams and Otto Stark (see entries for each). In 1897 he was commissioned to paint seascapes in New England and eventually made annual painting trips to Cape Ann (MA). In 1905 he moved to NYC, returning briefly to Indiana in 1907, but then settling permanently in the East in 1910 in Norwalk, CT, near the Silver Mine River. He died while on a visit to Indianapolis. Illustrator: James Whitcomb Riley's "When the Frost is on the Punkin: and "The Old Swimmin; Hole" from Neighborly Poems. Author: NotesóCritical and Biographical, Collection of William T. Walters, Baltimore, 1895; contributor, articles, Modern Art, 1892

Sources: WW13; Gerdts, Art Across America, vol. 2: 268-69 (with repro.); Newton and Gerdts, 138-51, 156 (with repro.)."