ELIOTH GRUNER Australian, 1882-1939

Dr George H. Abbott (at least 1916-1934)

Collection of William Grant Buckle (1894-1947), Sydney; thence by descent

Private collection, Perth

'Elioth Gruner's Oil Paintings', Art in Australia, special issue, 3rd series, no. 50, June 1933, p. 27, illus. as 'Beach Study'

The Home Annual (Australia Beautiful), 1934, p. 20, illus. as 'Beach study' 

Born in New Zealand, Elioth Gruner arrived in Sydney as a child and trained as an artist under Julian Ashton. He met and admired George Lambert; and saw Arthur Streeton’s 1907 exhibition. Streeton and Hans Heysen were to be strong formative influences on Gruner’s vision of Australia. He would certainly have known of the impressionist painters’ camps in Sydney in the 1890s (even, perhaps, that Tom Roberts and Charles Conder had first painted together at Coogee Bay and that Streeton had called Coogee ‘a lovely little place’).

Friends remembered Gruner spending most weekends of the summer of 1912-13 at the beach, painting until he was sunburnt, and his early beachscapes from this period were very well received. Fisherman, Coogee Beach is typical of the jewel-like beach paintings that contemporary reviewers compared favourably with Conder’s work, admiring above all the intimacy of Gruner’s vision, the airy freshness and his innate sense of decorative design.

In a composition that is almost Japanese in its elegant simplicity, more than half is flat, open space – the sweep of blond sand. Perfectly placed figures lead the eye towards the white sail of a dinghy set against sapphire-blue sea. Gruner knew and was influenced by the work of James McNeill Whistler who, in turn, had drawn upon Japanese art in his distinctly designed compositions with their subtle colour harmonies and high view point. Gruner himself collected Japanese prints and objets d’art when he could afford to buy them.

The first owner of this painting was Dr George Abbott who became an important purchaser of Gruner’s work from that time onward.¹ We are most grateful for assistance in cataloguing this work from Steven Miller, Librarian at the Art Gallery of New South Wales, who is compiling a catalogue raisonné of  Gruner's paintings

1. Pearce, B., Elioth Gruner 1882-1939, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 1983, p. 14.