Elioth Gruner

Elioth Lauritz Leganyer Gruner (16 December 1882 – 17 October 1939) was an Australian artist. A successor of the plein air Heidelberg School tradition in Australian art, Gruner is known for his high-key impressionist landscapes and his ability to capture the ephemeral effects of light. According to Norman Lindsay, Gruner "painted the purest light that ever has been seen on a bit of canvas".

Gruner won the Wynne Prize for landscape painting seven times, the most of any Australian artist besides Hans Heysen. One of Gruner's winners of the prize, Spring Frost (1919), has since become his best known work, and is regarded as perhaps the most loved Australian landscape painting in the Art Gallery of New South Wales.

Early life Gruner was born in Gisborne, New Zealand, younger son of Elliott Grüner, a Norwegian-born bailiff, and his Irish wife Mary Ann, who died in 1922. Gruner was brought to Sydney before he was a year old and at an early age showed a desire to draw. When about 12 years old his mother took him to Julian Ashton, who gave him his first lessons in art. At 14 years of age he obtained a position in a shop where he worked from 7.40 a.m. to 9.30 p.m. to help to maintain the household after his father and older brother died.

Artistic career

Gruner managed to do some painting on weekends, and in 1901 began to send work to the exhibitions of the Society of Artists, Sydney. From around 1907 his work began to attract serious attention: one admirer was Norman Lindsay. a painting showing the farm of Jim Innes at Emu Plains. This painting was purchased by the Art Gallery of New South Wales (AGNSW). Gruner was again the winner of the Wynne Prize in 1919 with his painting Spring Frost depicting Jim Innes and his cattle and in the following year the AGNSW trustees commissioned him to paint a large picture for the gallery, "The Valley of the Tweed". Though this was awarded the Wynne Prize in 1921 and is a capable work, it scarcely ranks among his best efforts. He seldom afterwards took anything larger than a 24-inch canvas.

In 1923 Gruner visited Europe and was away from Australia for around two years. The effect of travel on his work was very noticeable: there was generally a good deal of simplification, more attention to pattern, and a freer and wider sweep of his brush. Sir William Orpen had provided constructive comments which altered Gruner's style.

Wynne Prize awards

1916 – Morning Light 1919 – Spring Frost 1921 – Valley of the Tweed 1929 – On the Murrumbidgee 1934 – Murrumbidgee Ranges, Canberra 1936 – An Australian Landscape 1937 – Weetangera, Canberra

Works on exhibition In September 2014, the Gruner painting, untitled but known as The dry road, 1930, was acquired by the Canberra Museum and Gallery (CMAG), from a seller in Sydney. The foreground is dominated by a dusty road and fence behind, running from bottom-left to the middle-right of the picture, with a range of tree-covered mountains behind the mainly treeless valley. It is believed to show a stock route in the Naas Valley in Canberra's south. The main mountain is believed to be Mount Tennent (known to local Indigenous Australians as Tharwa).

Selected paintings