Emile Gruppe is best known for his marine scenes, primarily in the Gloucester, and Rockport, Massachusetts area, and also those painted of the Florida shorelines.  The hillsides and trees of Vermont were another favorite subject.  He was the son of Canadian/American painter Charles Paul Gruppe,  spending part of his youth in Holland - where his father was a favorite painter of the Dutch Royal family - and returning with his family to the United States at the outbreak of World War I.  Emile Gruppe became a prolific painter, and recipient of too many awards and honors to list. He was also an author and teacher, founding the Gruppe Summer School, and the Gloucester School of Painting.  He is represented in many major private and public collections, including the White House, Washington, DC, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, John & Mable Ringling Museum of Art, the National Academy, and The Salmagundi Club.

However, of all his accomplishments, his paintings of nude bathers or 'nymphs', as he often called them, usually depicted in the woods at the edge of a stream or lake, remain my personal favorite.  They have a certain unspoken whimsy beyond the many well executed harbors with colorful boats, or sophisticated seascapes.  It was the period of popularity  for paintings of the pure winged Psyche on the rock - possibly influencing this choice of subject matter.  But the streamside nudes of Gruppe stand on their own technically and esoterically - with a shy modesty and innocence that never attempts at sensuality, but only pure enjoyment of the nature about them. 

This painting is quite singular among the series, in Gruppe's use of strong violets and blues surrounding the orange-red hair and whitish skin, projecting a more magical aura than human.  It is a painting that I am compelled to view with a sense of child-like and surreal wonder.