GRONE, Ferdinand Emilius

1848 - 1920

Ferdinand Emilius Gröne was born at Ludensched, Westfalen, Prussia (Germany) on 18 January 1848 and baptised on the 29 January 1848, son of Herman Dietrich Gröne and his wife Anna Catharina née Vosloh. Ferdinand became a naturalised Englishman on 30 March 1903. In 1867 he matriculated from the University of London and in 1871, was a 21-year-old assistant master at Oliver's Mount School, Scarborough. He married at Newport, Isle of Wight, Hampshire in 1874, Elizabeth Pierce (1848-24 September 1901) and in December 1876, they opened a boarding school at Minden House, Colchester, Essex which by 1883 was a boarding school for girls at Minden House, Wellesley Road, Colchester. In 1881, a 32-year-old professor of languages & art master, living at Colchester, with his 32-year-old wife Elizabeth, a 5-year-old daughter (Alice Herminie) Minnie Gröne and a 3-year-old son Freidrich, both born at Colchester, and his 23-year-old niece Mary Pierce and ten pupils. His wife died at Colchester in 1901, aged 53 and in 1911, Ferdinand was a 62-year-old widower and schoolmaster still at Wellesley Road, with both his 36-year-old daughter Alice Herminie and a Miss Dorothy St Ledger 18, as teachers, with eight pupils. A member of the Ipswich Fine Art Club 1886-1903 and exhibited from Colchester in 1896 two watercolours, 'The "Boat Train" Shakespeare Cliff, Dover' and 'Iris', in 1889 he exhibited two oils, 'Wonderland' and 'Astronomers' and five watercolours, 'A Cloudy Morning', 'Beside the Still Waters', 'The Road to the New Forest', 'Mushroom Gatherers' and 'In the Moonlight Shimmer', in 1899 two oils, 'Wonderland' and 'Moonlight on the Cliffs', in 1900 an oil 'The Moonbeam' and in 1901 two further oils, 'The Banks of the Wye' and 'An Octopus Treet' and was a regular exhibitor with four pictures in 1902, two in 1903 and one in 1905 'The Hermit's Cave' with his last exhibit at Ipswich was in 1906 'Where the Waters Meet' with his watercolour 'In the Harvest Field' was shown at the centenary of the Club in 1974, on loan from Colchester & Essex Museums. In 1889, he exhibited at the Woodbridge Art Exhibition at the Assembly Room at the Bull Hotel, Woodbridge, an oil 'Peace Offering' and at Chelmsford Art Society in October 1893 'One for Baby'. He also exhibited at the Royal Academy and at the Royal Watercolour Society and at Suffolk Street Gallery of the Royal Society of British Artists. On 10 May 1900 there was a large auction sale of paintings 'by direction of the artists' Charles Eyles and Ferdinand Grone, at the Ipswich Art Gallery. Ferdinand Emilius Gröne died at 512a Lordship Lane, Camberwell, London on 14 February 1920, aged 70 [sic].

Royal Academy Exhibits
from Wellesley Road, Colchester
1888 893 An Afternoon Fishing
1889 591 The River Side
1897 1256 Colchester in Spring
1898 1087 Thistledown
         1164 In Green Pastures
1901 1114 Milking Time,
1903 800 The Little Poacher
         848 The Goose Girl
1908 1090 In the Cool of the Forest
1915 703 The Gleaners
         825 The Barley Harvest
1917 815 In Marchland of Northern France

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Works by This Artist