Elioth Gruner: Master of Australian Light

A visit to the remarkable autumn exhibition at the Canberra Museum and Gallery titled “Elioth Gruner: The Texture of Light”, reminds one again of the high achievement of this master of landscape painting in oils. After his death in 1939, the Art Gallery of New South Wales mounted a memorial exhibition of Elioth Gruner’s work. Norman Lindsay wrote an appreciation of the artist to introduce a good selection of tipped-in colour plates of landscapes, interior and still-life pictures, Elioth Gruner: Twenty-Four Reproductions in Colour from Original Oil Paintings, published by the Shepherd Press in Sydney in 1947. This volume, in de luxe and limited numbered editions, is one of the prize collector’s pieces amongst Australian art publications.

Gruner has always been seen as a key figure in the canon of Australian landscape painting in the traditional style, but as Deborah Clark notes, “his name has somewhat faded in the Australian art-historical record in the seventy-five years since his death”. Even so, he received an excellent retrospective exhibition mounted by the Art Gallery of New South Wales and curated by Barry Pearce in 1983 and his works are well represented in Australian public galleries, as well as in private collections. Bernard Smith’s rather jaundiced assessment in Australian Painting (1970) was that Gruner’s work was sentimental and lacked character, but his view did not diminish Gruner’s large following. Indeed, there exists an Elioth Gruner Society, members of which assisted in the preparation and presentation of the exhibition in Canberra.

Pearce’s entry for Gruner in the Australian Dictionary of Biography records that Elliott Lauritz Leganyer Gruner was born at Gisborne in New Zealand in 1882, the younger son of a German father born in Oslo and an Irish mother née Brennan. Gruner arrived in Sydney in 1883 and from 1894 he took drawing lessons from Julian Ashton, at whose school he befriended George Lambert. As “Elioth” Gruner, he exhibited regularly with the Society of Artists from 1901, became an artist of note by 1907, and was encouraged by Norman Lindsay from about 1913. After teaching at Ashton’s school in 1914, he went to Melbourne in 1915 and painted with Max Meldrum, “whose tonal theories strongly affected his vision and technique; he also visited the National Gallery of Victoria to see Corot’s The Bent Tree.” Another influence upon him was the work of the Australian watercolourist J.J. Hilder. Then, “until the end of the decade Gruner produced his finest work, arising out of an intense lyrical pre-occupation with the effects of, and even the very substance and nature of, light”. His almost pantheistic obsession, which manifested itself mainly around Emu Plains and Windsor, in the plein-air style he had learned from Ashton, inspired Lindsay to the most extravagant praise: “in my opinion [Gruner was] the greatest painter of pure light the world has ever seen”. Gruner was awarded the Wynne Prize for 1916 for the painting Morning Light and was to win six more times: 1919, 1921, 1929, 1934, 1936 and 1937.

Howard Hinton financed Gruner’s trip to London in 1923–24, where he managed an exhibition of Australian art at Burlington House. Pearce notes that Sir William Orpen,

unaware that he was being escorted around the exhibition by the artist, pungently criticized Gruner’s paintings; embarrassed, Orpen later made more constructive comments that were to change Gruner’s style dramatically … When he returned to Sydney early in 1925, he accepted Orpen’s advice to make smaller pictures, thin down his paint and achieve a drier, pastel-like surface; he steered towards an English style of modernism, interpreting the rhythmic anatomy of the earth as seen from a higher vantage-point, which tended to flatten forms. His tonality grew even more sombre in the 1930s. In the late 1920s his paintings sold extremely well and a large loan exhibition of his work was mounted in the Art Gallery in Sydney in 1932.

The exhibition currently on show in Canberra contains some seventy works by Gruner, mainly landscapes in oils, but also some seascapes, drawings and a few examples of his very fine drypoints. The works include major pictures drawn from public collections around Australia, as well as many from private collections hitherto unseen or rarely seen. It is a superbly curated exhibition and perhaps the best of its kind seen at Canberra outside of, say, the Rupert Bunny shows at the National Gallery. One cannot recommend this exhibition highly enough for anyone interested in Australian art and its history and in Gruner’s work in particular.

It is felicitous that this exhibition is on show at Canberra during autumn, as it has a special element or theme as to works painted by Gruner at various sites around southern New South Wales, the South Coast, the Southern Highlands, and in the Canberra and Monaro regions, amongst other areas. The typical cold and crisp light imparted by the Canberra area in particular has been captured very well by Gruner’s brush and in his palette of greens, greys, blues and white. You have only to look out at one of the vistas beyond Canberra to see a landscape typical of those Gruner depicted—the low green-grey trees, the browned-green hillsides and the azure, grey or purpled skies, with fluffs of white clouds.

Deborah Clark, the Senior Curator at the Canberra Museum and Gallery, has also organised a series of events and talks relating to the exhibition, including a tour of Gruner’s painting sites around Canberra. In addition, the exhibition features some special items of Gruner memorabilia, such as the reproduction of Gruner’s Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra (1934) (Wynne Prize) used on the front of the menu for the official dinner reception for the Duke of Gloucester at Parliament House, Canberra, in 1934, as well as photographs of Gruner painting and at home. At the start of the exhibition is Gruner’s Self-Portrait in Oils (1915) which betrays his reserved, but somewhat puckish, facial expression.

The works extend from a youthful drawing by Gruner of his teacher Julian Ashton done in 1896, through to some pictures from a series he painted at Deuchar Gordon’s property “Manar” between Canberra and Braidwood, in 1939. This is one of the themes developed in the exhibition, based upon Gruner’s grazier and other patrons in the Southern Highlands region and in the Canberra–Monaro area, including the Gordons at “Manar” and the Ryrie family at “Michelago”. In addition to well-known favourites of the viewing public, such as the large oil Spring Frost (1919), Morning Light (1916) and similar farm pictures done at Emu Plains, there is the well-known The Pines (1926) with its dark green pines and their shadows, and the remarkable Piccadilly Valley (1926) which shows Gruner’s adoption of the Paul Nash-like usage of a high viewpoint and hedgerows and roads showing the divisions and undulations of the tended landscape. Familiar also are the silvery pictures The River Sovereign (1920) and Valley of the Sovereign (1920). Less familiar and an outstanding inclusion is the bright spring picture In the Orchard (1920), with its “blossom” effects, reminiscent of John Peter Russell’s Brittany scenes. Pictures like Spring at Bathurst (c 1926) are typical of another strand of Gruner’s work, depicting a rural scene in brisk morning air. From a private collection, we see The Harbour from Killountan (c 1919–20) a delightful oil view of Sydney Harbour from the garden at the home of one of Gruner’s friends and patrons, John Lane Mullins, “a prominent Sydney lawyer and art lover” as the catalogue describes him. It is worth noting at this point that the catalogue is a detailed one, with an excellently written, scholarly and substantial essay on Gruner and his work by Deborah Clark, and a generous array of colour plates.

Also in this exhibition are some lesser-known works by Gruner, including examples of his work done in England and France in 1924–25, such as Devon Landscape and Aloes, St Tropez. That Devon picture well illustrates Gruner’s use of hedgerows to indicate and emphasise land contours. Of particular interest in this exhibition are the paintings done in the Canberra–Monaro region, including Manar Landscape and the oil study for it, done in 1921 depicting the “Manar” property from a hillside. In addition, there is the wholly delightful Manar Landscape of 1928, a view of the same property from another elevated position, which captures perfectly the colours of the region, with its muted grass-greens and brown-grey foliage of eucalypts on the dry hillsides, interspersed with the brighter greens of trees near the homestead buildings. This picture rates with Gruner’s very best; indeed, it is comparable with his views of the Bellinger River area in northern New South Wales. Again, one is struck here by Gruner’s subtle use of the contours of the white road surfaces, curving with the gentle rise and fall of the landscape.

Included in the pictures loaned from private sources is the wonderful oil of the town of Cooma (1927). This picture combines the greys of clumps of rock, the dark greens of stands of pine around the town, with a view across the roofs of the town, the further tree lines and hills rising to mountains in the distance, all rendered with the suggestion of the dry, clear air typical of that locality. Notable likewise for their aerial effects are the pair of works Between Showers (1928) and Thunderstorm (1928) which aptly capture the region’s  “big skies”. Of particular note is the major oil On the Murrumbidgee (1929), painted from an elevated point on a steep hillside, with a few sheep grazing on the sharp slope leading to the valley’s darkened crevice and away in the distance, the curves of the Murrumbidgee River, its bounding hills and in the far distance beyond, the lines of the mountains.

Smaller works, such as Sunrise, Yass District and Sunset, Yass District (both 1931) although oils are, in their lesser way, somewhat reminiscent of Turner’s views of Venice—each of them has the most delicate handling of the sky shot with pinks and pale yellow. Rural views such as Murrumbidgee River (1929), Yass Landscape (1928) and Sunny Pastures (1931) embody typical views of the southern New South Wales landscape. Even more striking is Rolling Hills near Yass (1929) with its deep blue of the river, its dotted trees (almost Fred Williams-like) and the shower of rain issuing from clouds over the dark blue range of mountains in the far distance, again painted from a hillside slope that is very steep indeed, giving the centre ground of the picture enormous space and depth, looking down to water.

Some pictures done towards the South Coast include Kangaloon NSW (1932), an especially happy rural view with farmhouse, rolling hills with cultivation and the smoke of a fire in the mid-distance and a high and well-lit sky looming. In similar vein is Road to Jamberoo (1929), where the device of fencing, hedgerows and roads accentuating the hill contours is used to great effect in a picture that recalls Lloyd Rees’s much later views nearby, such as Road to Berry, which influenced Whiteley. Also painted in the same area are Narooma Headland (1927) and South Coast Farm (1929) that again catch the undulating hills well. Included also are two pictures of the Bellinger series, Bellinger River from Connell’s Lookout, NSW (1937), with its echoes of Streeton’s Still Glides the Stream and Shall Forever Glide, but also neat divisions of cultivation, cattle at a dam with a windmill, and a view taken from a slope away to low hills, all under a dry, slightly hazy and washed-out sky. Another is Winter Afternoon, Bellingen, NSW (1937). The Shire of Bellingen has at least one plaque memorial to Gruner at one of his painting spots above the Bellinger River.

It would not do to close these notes on this major Gruner exhibition without mentioning that it includes a very fine example from the series of pictures he painted of Shelly Beach, Nambucca Heads (1933). This is a superb sweeping view, from one headland looking down across the curving beach with breakers and gradations of wet and dry sand following the contours of the shore, away to a skillion-like headland opposite, with thick clumps of trees and other vegetation covering the sandy hills bounding the back of the beach. I have recently seen one other example of a Shelly Beach painting by Gruner in a private collection and as with the picture in this show, they represent a high point in his landscape and seascape work. And speaking of seascapes, this exhibition contains a good representative selection of Gruner’s views of Sydney Harbour and Sydney beaches, as well as some exquisite examples of Gruner’s small, Boudin-like, beach scenes, such as The Beach (1918), a fine example of the small beach scenes with low horizon and lavender sky, of which Gruner was a master and which are so strongly sought after by collectors. These were later echoed in delicate and misted seascapes done by Lance Solomon, a Wynne Prize winner who painted in New South Wales from about 1939.

I thoroughly agree with what the catalogue concludes about the significance and the style of Elioth Gruner’s artistic achievement:

Gruner’s … career offers interesting insights into Australian cultural life in both the city and the bush. In particular, his extensive engagement with pastoral life demonstrates the importance of modern culture and the arts, [especially] an interest in painting, music, literature and the garden movement, in the rural homesteads of the period. In the progression of Gruner’s work from the lyrical pastorals of Emu Plains to the modern interpretations of landscape exemplified in his paintings of the Canberra region, he retained an unswerving commitment to painting before the motif, the sun full on the canvas. In Gruner’s practice light always remained an essential element within the landscape, although the emphasis shifted from the creation of optical effects on the surface of the painting to encapsulating light through embodied clarity of form. Gruner’s significant achievement as an artist was his ability to create landscape paintings that are highly evocative of place, within a modernist vocabulary of rigorous geometry, strong modelling and carefully considered colour.

This latter is an important point. Some may (at least at first) regard Gruner as dull as a colourist, but once one considers the careful deliberation with which he obviously worked, and also opens one’s eyes to the colours of the actual locations of his various subject matter, such as views in the Canberra–Monaro, Sydney Harbour and beaches, and the South Coast areas, it is clear that, like William Frater, Gruner was one of our greatest colourists.