ELIOTH GRUNER

Dame Eadith Walker, Sydney
Acquired by the present owner's grandparents; thence by descent
Private collection, New South Wales

Loan Exhibition of the Works of Elioth Gruner, National Art Gallery of New South wales, Sydney 21 December 1932 - 21 February 1933, cat. 20
Elioth Gruner Memorial Loan Exhibition, National Art Gallery of New South Wales, Sydney, 17 April - 31 May 1940, cat. 57, as 'Australian Landscape' 
Elioth Gruner Memorial Loan Exhibition, National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne, 5 July - 4 August 1940, cat. 8, as 'Australian Landscape'

Elioth Gruner: Twenty-Four Reproductions in Colour from Original Oil Paintings, Foreward by Norman Lindsay, Shepherd Press, Sydney, 1947, pl. 4, illus., as 'Yass Landscape' and dated 1923 

Good condition - recently given a light clean by conservator David Stein
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Elioth Gruner was one of the most successful Australian landscape painters of the early 20^th century, winning the Wynne Prize on no fewer than five separate occasions between 1916 and 1937. In his early works he forged a unique personal language through the admixture of Arthur Streeton's blue and gold, Max Meldrum's tonal structure and Hans Heysen's domestic-bovine subject matter. In 1923, however, he travelled to London to manage the presentation of the New South Wales Society of Artists' Exhibition of Australian Art at Burlington House, and stayed for two years. There he was evidently impressed by European modernism, responding favourably to exhibitions by Augustus John, Christopher Nevinson and even Paul Gauguin, as well as to the Cézannes he saw on a continental tour in late 1924.

Indeed, the constructed, faceted landscapes of Nevinson and Cézanne that seem to have had an almost immediate impact. He sent a parcel of oil sketches home to his friend Howard Hinton, who noted: 'he is striking to my mind an entirely new style to him, painting in simple broad planes of colour instead of the modified shadows of his Australian work...'¹ William Moore put it well a decade later, in his Story of Australian Art, where he described how after Gruner's overseas trip 'his compositions became more constructive, the effect being more concentrated; he saw things in a bigger way and had the courage to emphasize form even when it meant some sacrifice of the picturesque' ²

These details of personal and artistic history make the dating of this bright, spare picture somewhat problematic. It is identified in Gruner's 1947 picture book as having been executed in 1923³, and it may well be that the work was painted prior to the artist's departure for England at the end of February. However, it is stylistically closer to the crisp, taut, modern-accented hillscapes of the later 1920s, works such as Man and Mountains (1926, Art Gallery of New South Wales) or On the Murrumbidgee (1929, Art Gallery of New South Wales).

It is just possible that the work is in fact a 1923 Australian subject, but painted under the direct influence of the Europeans, one of two commissions for Australian landscapes Gruner received while in London.⁴ The work was formerly in the collection of the heiress, philanthropist, patron of the arts and collector Dame Eadith Walker. Dame Eadith was a life member of the Society of Artists; perhaps it was she who commissioned this work, as a discreet form of financial subsidy for the Society's representative in London.

We are grateful for assistance cataloguing this work from Steven Miller, Librarian of the Art Gallery of New South Wales, who is compiling a catalogue raisonne of Gruner's paintings.  

1. Howard Hinton, letter to Norman Lindsay, Hinton papers, Mitchell Library, quoted in Barry Pearce, Elioth Gruner1882-1939 (exhibition catalogue), Sydney: Art Gallery of New Soutth Wales, 1983, p. 24
2. William Moore, The story of Australian art (2 vols.), Sydney: Angus and Robertson, 1934, vol. 1, p. 101
3. Elioth Gruner, Elioth Gruner: twenty -four reproductions in colour from original oil paintings (foreword by Norman Lindsay), Sydney: Shepherd Press, 1947
4. See Pearce, op. cit., p. 23