Richard Gruelle

Richard Buckner Gruelle was an American Impressionist painter, illustrator, and author, who is best known as one of the five Hoosier Group artists. Gruelle's masterwork is The Canal—Morning Effect, a painting of the Indianapolis, Indiana skyline, but he is also known for his watercolors and marine landscapes of the Gloucester, Massachusetts, area. In 1891 Indiana poet James Whitcomb Riley commissioned Gruelle to illustrate two of his more notable poems, "When the Frost is on the Punkin'" and "The Old Swimmin' Hole," which were published in Neighborly Poems. Gruelle is also the author of Notes, Critical and Biographical: Collection of W. T. Walters, which provides a detailed description of Baltimore industrialist William Thompson Walters's extensive art collection.
Born in Cynthiana, Kentucky, the self-taught artist is the only one of the Hoosier Group painters without European training. Gruelle grew up in Arcola, Illinois, apprenticed as a house and sign painter, and established his first studio in Decatur, Illinois, where he began by painting portraits and domestic scenes before turning to landscapes.