Charles Paul Gruppe

Landscape and marine painter Charles Paul Gruppe was born in Picton, Nova Scotia, on September 3, 1860. A fascinating, self-taught artist, and father of well-known Rockport artist Emile Gruppe (1896-1978). When Gruppe was ten, he moved with his family to Rochester, New York, after the death of his father. Interested in painting from an early age, he spent much of his time sketching and creating watercolors and oils. To help support his mother and sisters, he worked in a sign-painting shop, soon mastering the craft. Eventually, at age twenty-one, he had earned enough money to travel to Europe, where he traveled through France, Germany, and Holland, searching for a place to settle and practice his art.

He was taken with Holland, perhaps attracted to its fishing villages with their picturesque boats and quaint houses, and decided to stay. He built a home and studio in the little fishing village of Katwyk Ann Zee and painted much of his European work in the vicinity of that town. While living in the Netherlands from 1897-1913, he painted with the artists of the Hague School. This painterly work undoubtably was a result of that period. He later returned to New York where his career flourished as a member of the National Art Club, the American Watercolor Society, the Art Club of Philadelphia, and the Salmagundi Club.

Today his paintings are included in the collections of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Detroit Museum of Art, the Dutch Roya Family Collection, Brooklyn Museum of Art, National Gallery of Canada and the Detroit Institute of the Arts.