Gruelle was a member of the reknowned "Hoosier Group" which included T. C. Steele, William Forsyth, J. Ottis Adams and Otto Stark (see entries for each).  In 1897 he was commissioned to paint seascapes in New England and eventually made  annual painting trips to Cape Ann (MA ). In 1905 he moved to New York City, returning briefly to Indiana in 1907, but then settling permanently in the East in 1910 in Norwalk, Connecticut, near the Silver Mine River. 

A self-taught landscape painter, illustrator and writer Richard Gruelle lived in Indianapolis and Norwalk, Connecticut.  He was apprenticed to a house and sign painter as a young man.  He initially practiced portraiture but was best known as a landscape painter in the tradition of the Barbizon school, having taken up landscape painting in oil and watercolor in Indianapolis, circa1882. He painted for several seasons during the1890s in Washington, DC and held several exhibitions there. 

He died while on a visit to Indianapolis. 

He was illustrator of James Whitcomb Riley's When the Frost is on the Punkin: and The Old Swimmin; Hole from Neighborly Poems. Author: 

Exhibitions included the Denison Hotel, 1894; Five Hoosier Painters, Chicago, 1894; Art Institute of Chicago, 1897; Louisiana Purchase Exposition, St. Louis, 1904; Indianapolis & New Canaan (solos).

Source:

Peter Hastings Falk, Editor, Who Was Who in American Art