art written by regina cole • photographed by eric roth
NICE SAVE • A rare mural by acclaimed Cape Ann artist
Emile A. Gruppé is rescued and preserved by a thoughtful homeowner
GWENRYAN’SDILEMMA WASVEXING: Her beach house was a tear-down, but the mural painted on the bath- room wall 50 years ago was precious. Long after she had finalized plans for a handsome replacement for the
tired 1959 one-room cabin at Wingaersheek Beach in
Gloucester, Massachusetts, she delayed the project, searching for a way to save the art before bulldozing the house.
“Emile Gruppé was a good friend of my godparents,
who owned this cabin before me,” Ryan says. “He and my
godfather loved to fish. Afterward, they sat on the porch,
looking out at the water, drinking and talking.”
One of the best known of the mid-20th-century artists
of the Cape Ann School, Emile A. Gruppé (1896–1978)
was drawn to Gloucester by the now-iconic paintings of
American Impressionism, a movement that took hold
there after the turn of the century. He considered himself
an Impressionist painter, and while his early paintings lean
on historic pointillism, his mature work displays a muscular
to remove the mural,
located in the tiny cabin
bathroom, Marc Sears
braced the wall behind it as
Jacob Smith looks on
(inset, left). The salvaged
painting, now set in a frame
(inset, right), was
presented to homeowner
Gwen Ryan.
