ELIOTH GRUNER Australian, 1882-1939

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

Private collection, Perth

Gruner’s first beach paintings date from around the time he moved to Bondi from North Sydney. As his biographer Barry Pearce observes, they were in part a product of the artist’s love of and physical involvement with the subject: after the First World War, Gruner enthusiastically took up body surfing (although, it is said, not very proficiently!). Sunny scenes such as Bondi, filled with holidaymakers, were also, perhaps, an antidote to the reported horrors of the previous four years. Gruner had enlisted in the army in June 1918 but, the war having ended by November, was discharged by Christmas.  

Gruner was, arguably, Australia's most dedicated plein-air painter and one of the most popular and successful painters of the inter-war years. In 1932 a major exhibition of his work at the Art Gallery of New South Wales was critically acclaimed; a memorial exhibition followed in 1940; and he was honoured again by a retrospective in 1983.