Color Palettes: Emil Albert Gruppé (1896-1978)

You paint the way you're made.  And the viewer, looking at your pictures, is interested because he senses your mind and emotions at work....  I studied with everybody that I thought was any good- each artist had his own approach.  But when they differed, it didn't matter, because the real art comes after the study, when you're on your own and have to... express your own attitude....

Born on November 23rd, 1896, in Rochester, NY, prolific artist and teacher, Emile Albert Gruppé, was raised in what was obviously a positive artistic environment. His family's household produced not only himself, but also his brother, Karl, a noted sculptor; his other brother, Paulo, a cellist; and his sister, Virginia, a watercolorist.  Their father, Charles, a painter and picture dealer, encouraged the children in their studies from an early age, and provided them with significant opportunities to study abroad in their artistic pursuits.

Though born in New York, Emil Gruppé was raised in Holland, in the small fishing village of Katwyk an Zee.  Charles had settled the family in Holland when Emile was young in order to operate his business as picture dealer, securing contemporary Dutch paintings for sale in the American market.  During this time, the Gruppé family made frequent and extended trips to popular painting locales in Holland, and Emil, watching his father paint Barbizon-inspired landscapes, learned the rudiments of painting and drawing in this way.  By 1913, however, amid fears of escalating tensions in Europe, the Gruppés returned permanently to the United States.

Emil's formal training began in Rochester, where his parents apprenticed him to a sign painter, but he soon thereafter sought out instruction further afield.  In New York City, he attended classes at the National Academy of Design, and later at the Art Students League, where he studied under Charles Chapman and George Bridgman.  In Provincetown, Massachusetts, Emil learned from landscape painter Charles Hawthorne at the Cape Cod School of Art, and in Europe, Gruppé studied under Richard Miller at the Académie de la Grande Chaumière.  His most influential teacher, however, was John Carlson, with whom Emil studied at the League's summer school in Woodstock, New York.  It was "John Carlson who turned me into a painter," said Gruppé, who also felt it was Carlson who taught him to see all "the pictorial possibilities of a subject."

His style, which began in the tonalist manner, changed over time into a bolder, more robust impressionism, which became his hallmark.  By the 1930's he was well-known and well- established in the art circles of his day. His energy and dedication to his art, made of him a prolific artist, which enabled him to show throughout the United States.  Whether painting in his adopted hometown of Gloucester, Massachusetts, at his studio in Carnegie Hall in New York, or at his vacation retreats in Jeffersonville, Vermont or Naples, Florida, Gruppé was at his easel every day creating his expressive, direct paintings.  It is rumored that he completed about two-hundred oil paintings a year in this manner, during a career which spanned sixty years!

Applying the same dedication he had reserved for his picture-making to teaching, Emil founded the Gloucester School of Painting in 1942. Located on Rocky Neck in East Gloucester, Massachusetts, the school boasted an impressive faculty which included not only Emil, but also many of his own teachers.  Bridgman, Carlson, Miller, and Chapman all joined Gruppé in his summer school, and their well-attended lessons continued until 1979.  Gruppé's own weekly demonstrations were the highlight, however, providing a "no-miss" event of circus-like proportions, where the exuberant Gruppé shared all he knew with crowds often numbering over one hundred attendees.

Though he suffered a stroke in the early 1970s, Gruppé continued to paint and give weekly demonstrations until his death on September 28th, 1978.  Even on that last morning, Emil had stretched a canvas in preparation for a day filled with painting.  He was 82 years old.

Gruppé wrote three instructional books on painting, Brushwork for the Oil Painter (1977), Gruppé on Painting (1979), and Gruppé on Color (1979).  They are considered to be excellent resources, though they are no longer in print.  Prices on used copies of Gruppé on Painting sell anywhere from $100 to well over $300.

I came across Gruppé's palette in two different sources.  In The Northlight Book of Acrylic Painting Techniques by Earl Grenville Killeen and Lea Raechel Killeen, Gruppé's palette is described as six colors consisting of a cool and warm of each primary, plus white.  Those colors, as provided to the authors by artist Brad Faegre are:

• Deep Magenta (cool)
• Hansa Yellow (cool)
• Ultramarine Blue  (cool)
• Cadmium Red Light (warm)
• Cadmium Yellow Light (warm)
• Phtalocyanine Blue (warm)
• Titanium White 
  

The second source, On the Training of Painters by Richard Lack, provides a different Gruppé palette, for which the author credits artist Don Koestner for providing.  Those colors are as follows:

• Cadmium Lemon (or light)
• Cadmium Yellow Medium
• Cadmium Orange
• Cadmium Red Deep
• Ultramarine Blue
• Thalo Blue
• Rose Madder (though Lack substitutes Thio Violet for this color)
• White

If Gruppé lists the colors of his palette in his books, I do not know, as I do not own them, nor have I ever read them.  I am curious to see what colors he actually recommends, though my guess is that the latter is probably the closer.

*  01/02/09  Jose Romero provided me with the list of Gruppé's colors from the book Gruppé on Painting.  They are as follows:

• Cadmium Lemon Yellow
• Cadmium Yellow Deep
• Cadmium Orange (added to the palette for convenience)
• Cadmium Red Deep
• Ultramarine Blue
• Phtalo Blue
• Rose Madder Deep
• Zinc White

Thank you, Jose!

* 01/03/09  Frank Gardner provided a further explanation of how Gruppé used his color palette:

The beauty of this palette is the importance (Gruppé) places on the primaries.  He uses a warm and cool of each and they are about as pure as you can get.  He explains it like this in his book on color(:)

Each of the colors on his palette has only two of the three primaries, and that all three primaries in the same color would gray it.

• Ultramarine Blue has red and blue
• Phtalo Blue has red and blue
• Cadmium red deep has red and yellow
• Rose Madder has red and blue
• Cadmium Lemon Yellow has yellow and blue
• Cadmium Yellow Deep has red and yellow

Therefore, the purest green you can mix with this palette is Phtalo Blue and Cad. Lemon Yellow, because it has no red, which is the complement of green and would gray (the mixture) down.  If I don't want my green to be that pure I use the Ultramarine or the Cadmium Yellow which have a little bit of red, and the color is not quite so pure.

Frank also informed me that the Rockport Art Association in Massachusetts has reprinted Gruppé on Painting in limited quantities, and it is available from their gift shop for $34.95.  He says it is worth every penny, and I plan on ordering a copy.

Thanks Frank!