Although he is also known for his New England winter landscapes and his many nudes in his early work, Gruppe and most of the founding members of the Rockport Art Association are best known for their paintings of Rockport and Gloucester harbors. Emile Gruppe was born in Rochester, New York and studied at the National Academy of Design in New York from 1914-1918. Further study took him to the Art Students League, La Grande Chaumiere in Paris and study with John F. Carlson, Richard Miller, Charles Chapman, George Bridgman & Charles Hawthorne. He was a founding member of the Rockport Art Association in 1921 and summered there most of his career. He often spent weeks in the winter painting in Woodstock, Vermont, and his long-time studio was Carnegie Hall in New York City. He eventually moved to Gloucester, Massachusetts where he lived until his death.

Gruppe was a prolific painter whose work declined in quality later in his life. Through the 1940s he kept a freshness in his work that made it representative of the best of American Impressionism, which broadened and amplified the principles of the French tradition. By the 1960s, however, his work had lost the clarity and vigor that made his earlier work remarkable. He is closely associated in style and subject with his fellow Rockport painters, Anthony Thieme, Aldro Hibbard and Lester Stevens.

Some of the many awards Gruppe received in his lifetime include: Allied Artists of America (1944); Springville, Utah (1928, 1946); Guilford, CT (1939); Meriden Arts & Crafts (1939, 1946); CAFA (1956); Rockport AA (1956, 1957); New Haven Paint & Clay Club (1935, 1938, 1939, 1940); Bridgeport, CT AA (1940); Champlain Valley Exposition (1949) and others.